Strange Candy

Summary: On the turn of Charlie's twelfth birthday, a new threat to the factory arises. Charlie learns how important a friend can be. Wonka learns how difficult mentorship can be. Wonka/Charlie friendship, non-slash. Wonka/OC.

Notes: …Well, I'm very sorry for the delay in updating. I have now officially moved into residence, and getting internet access if very difficult, as the entire University of Windsor is going wireless. I don't have a wireless card, so on top of purchasing $450 worth of books, I have to get a wireless card for my computer as well. Crap.

While I'm still figuring that out, I'm updating via school computers. They're nice computers. I wish I had a computer this nice. Thanks for all the lovely reviews, though, they kept me sane during this very hectic few days. Week. Don't worry, I'm not losing my steam on this. My updates will just be a little farther apart. I should get writing now, you probably want to know what happens next…

Disclaimer: Consult previous chapter.

Chapter Seven: Avalanche

"Louis! What are you doing?"

April almost stumbled through the slush and snow as she bore down on her temporary partner. Louis stopped a few meters from the gate and turned around; something small clenched in his hand. When she closed to him, he tossed the object towards her and she caught it clumsily.

"Dispatch," he growled. "Don't forget, that while you're here, you're a field agent, on field call, doing field duty. I've already spoken to the detachment."

Her face flushed from both the temperature and his uncouth treatment of her status. "And?" she snapped.

"We're driving to Marisville. Three admissions at the hospital there had their stomachs pumped. Food poisoning. Why don't you take a stab at what they found in their stomach contents?"

The back of April's neck prickled. She glanced down at the thing in her hand and, seeing that it was the older agent's cell phone, threw it back. "Marisville. That's twenty-five miles down the road from here."

"Not far from home," he responded, turned, and began to walk towards the car.

"Wait," she said. He paused. April had folded her arms and was scrutinizing him with plain delicacy. "If these poisonings are related to the ones in Michigan, I'd understand why the detachment would want us there. But if they aren't positive that these two incidents are linked, why are they sending me? I'm an international agent of diplomacy, not local cop."

Louis tossed his arms exasperatedly and sauntered over to April's beat-up replacement car. "Yeah? Well, I am. And while we're not joined at the hips, we are at the badge. C'mon, there'll be plenty of time to whittle this guy down."

"And none of this seems strange to you?" she asked scornfully. "Willy Wonka is a mental case, not an idiot. Why would he distribute poisoned chocolate bars so close to his factory?"

"When will you stop asking questions and get in the car?" Louis growled back, gripping the top of the open car door in his hands tightly. He gestured hurriedly towards the car seat, indicating that she should enter the passenger side.

"Wait a minute, you're driving?" she asked, dropping her arms to her sides in disbelief. "This is my car, or my rental anyway—you know what I mean. I drive."

Louis' eyebrows furled together in one, large grizzled clump. He sighed deeply. "Do you know where Marisville is?"

Yes, April was very much beginning to dislike her new partner. Truman would never be such a smart-ass. Or at least, not act like he has a pinecone shoved up his—

"Banks!"

April jumped, and regretted it a moment later. She grimaced her resentment, unable to find a way around his unjustifiable logic. With a bit more malice then she would have liked to let on, she strode over to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. There was only one was to resolve something of this caliber: act professional and don't allow your true feelings to show.

"The brakes stick," she informed the older agent as he stepped into the driver's seat. He gave her a lengthy, knowing look before reaching to turn the key in the transmission.

The trip to Marisville was long and silent.

"…and if Charlie is ever going to learn how to be a successful chocolatier like me, something must be done about those horrible lawyer people!"

The Oompa Loompa peered over his glasses and wrote something on his tiny notepad. Without any incitation on his part, Willy continued on his tirade of reasoning and loops of doubt and inspiration that would naturally drive any human psychiatrist mad.

"I know," Mr. Wonka spurted and shot up on the small velvet bed. "I'll take Charlie with me to South America! Yeah! I'll bet by the time we get back, everything will be back to normal. It's the perfect plan!" His face faltered a little. "Is it?"

The bespectacled Oompa Loompa made a stern face and tapped his pencil on the top of his notepad in a meaningful way. However alien the gesture was to anyone else, Mr. Wonka immediately caught on to his psychiatrist's intent.

"Oh," he said disappointedly, lying back in his chair. "I forgot Charlie has school. Not to mention his poor mom and dad; it would be dreadful if the lawyer people started bothering them. And lawyers are terribly clever when it comes to tracking people. We'd be caught in two shakes of a Dunglehobber's tail."

Thus followed a short ruffling of paper as the Oompa Loompa flipped through his notes. He made a brief hand signal with the pen still gripped tightly in his fingers.

"Hey, you're right," said Willy, tensing again. "I should talk to Charlie about it. Good Galoompa's, I haven't seen him in days! I'm ghastly at mentoring! A real chocolatier wouldn't be wasting his time worrying about a couple of meddlesome, well-dressed impostors. What's gotten into me?"

The chocolatier practically leapt onto his feet, causing a slight frown to pull at the Oompa Loompa's face. Willy snatched his velvet coat from the back of the chair, threw it on, took his cane in one hand and rushed for the tiny door at the opposite end of the hall.

After the fiasco that occurred a few nights ago, Mr. Wonka had taken it into his personal agenda to research what these 'FBI' agents were, where they came from, what they did, and why 'guns' were so darn frightening. What he had found startled him. Now, he knew all about some kinds of weapons, and knew that it was simply the best thing to do to avoid them.

Guns, however, were an entirely new chapter to him. They killed! Oh, sure, Willy knew what death was. He knew that when an Oompa Loompa became a certain age, he or she died. There was no denying that he, Willy Wonka, was not a young chocolatier and that some day, he would—

And Charlie! Willy flinched at the notion. If only he hadn't been so careless! Poor Charlie was putting himself in the direst of dangers to protect him, and what a mess! Willy had rarely ever thought to bother learning more about the outside world in the past. There was just too much to be done in the factory. Oh, but if he had! Charlie would not have endangered himself like that; no, he would not have allowed it.

The pleasant aroma of warm chocolate and sweet candy washed over him as he stepped into the Chocolate Room. It reminded him over how much the factory meant, not only to him, but to little Charlie as well. Suddenly, it was clear. Willy Wonka would go to any length to ensure that he carried out his promise to the aspiring young boy, come Hopglumps or high water.

Willy stalked towards the house, occasionally utilizing his cane to keep his balance over the knolls of edible grass. Ever since he'd had that darned headset removed and his braces taken out, doing all those tricky stunts such as climbing steps and navigating tricky terrains, he'd had a horrible time with his balance. Now whenever he heard the expression "Dentistry is all in the teeth" he felt like giving someone a good kick in the teeth.

He stopped just in front of the Buckets' door and rapped on it with the swirled top of his cane. And he waited.

After an unusually long moment, a cracked voice called from the inside, "Come in, Mr. Wonka."

Willy stiffened in alarm; not because the Bucket who had invited him in used his name, of course, but because that said Bucket was not Mister or Missus Bucket! If he was not mistaken, that was—

The door clicked and swung open, and there stood Grandpa Joe, a long forlorn expression bothering his face. "You'd better come in, Mr. Wonka. Charlie wants to see you."

Mr. Wonka froze in place, unable to uproot his feet from the ground. That was most certainly not a happy 'Charlie wants to see you, Mr. Wonka'; it was definitely, absolutely positively a bad greeting! For a moment, all he could do was stare and shift his cane back and forth between his hands. Then, in a spur of panic, he swept past Grandpa Joe and entered the house.

Both Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina were lying in bed, their quiet expressions unreadable. Georgina seemed to be struggling to smile, for whatever reason was unknown. Willy stopped and his gaze slowly traveled downwards. Charlie sat at the small table, his quiet brown eyes trained on the miniature model of the factory he'd made from broken toothpaste lids.

Willy squirmed a little and his brows furled anxiously. "Charlie?"

Charlie didn't look up, but stared unblinkingly. "Hi, Mr. Wonka."

"My dear boy, whatever's wrong?" Mr. Wonka wanted to know.

Slowly, Charlie took his eyes off the model and looked up at the puzzled chocolatier without saying a word. Then he stood up, looked away, and ran. In a moment, he disappeared up the ladder to his room and slammed the door.

Mr. Wonka could only gape, bewildered and drastically upset over Charlie's reaction to him. Without meaning to, he blinked and felt the edges of his eyes watering. Quickly, he squinted them a few times and whirled around on Grandpa Joe. "What's going on? Where's Mister and Missus Bucket? What's wrong with Charlie?"

"Mr. Wonka, those are all very difficult questions," Joe replied defensively. Gingerly, he moved over to the side of the bed and looked up at the second floor, where Charlie was currently ignoring them. "Perhaps…you should sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

Willy did so mindlessly, unaware that his choice of seating happened to be the Buckets' only table. He reached up and removed his top hat; a habit that he adapted every time he entered the Buckets house. He rested his cane on his lap, wringing his hands on either end of it impatiently.

Granpa Joe sighed and gave the chocolatier a look before he spoke. "Sarah is very ill, Mr. Wonka. She went to the hospital yesterday morning and she's going to have her baby much earlier than anyone ever expected."

"What?" Mr. Wonka leapt to his feet. He bashed his head painfully against a low beam on the ceiling and yelped. "Yow! 'Kay, I'm okay, just tell me where it is and I'll go straight away! Hospitals are very scary places, you know, and I don't want her to-"

"Mr. Wonka, Mr. Wonka, it's all right," Grandpa insisted urgently, patting the chocolatier on the arm. "John is with here right now. You should be worried about Charlie, I think. He's very upset about it and he won't talk speak to anyone anymore. I'm afraid he's cross with you. You've been gone for some days now, Mr. Wonka."

The realization of what his absence signified washed over him like a tidal wave. Willy sat down again, only this time much more slowly. He wore a pale, ghostly face of confusion. "Yeah," he said a little sadly. "Gee, I can't believe that all happened when I was gone. Is…is Charlie's mom going to be…'kay?"

The lines on Grandpa Joe's face deepened with concern. "I don't know," he said softly. "We won't know until the baby is born. Charlie wanted to go too, but he stayed behind, just so he could wait for you. But you never came…"

If someone had taken Willy's heart, trodden upon it, set it aflame and replaced it with a handful of salt, it still would not have hurt as much as the guilt that brought on. Miserably, he lifted his gaze to look at Grandpa Joe. "You must really not like me, huh…" He rose to his feet unsteadily and groped for his hat, found it, and put it back on. "Then I…I guess I should just…go, I guess. Ch-Charlie?"

A small shadow seen beneath the cracked, dry boards of Charlie's wall moved, implying that the boy was listening. But Charlie did not respond, however, and Mr. Wonka cringed inwardly.

"It's okay. You can be mad at me. I deserve it," said the chocolatier briskly, meaning every word of it. "I'm going to see how your mom is doing, 'kay? I think she'd really like it if you came, too. You don't have to talk to me or anything, but please come, please do. You always said f-f…family should stick together, right?"

A very long silence followed thereafter, in which all of Willy's hopes dwindled to a cold, sickly feeling in his stomach. Numbly, he looked down and at the tops of his hands, which rest on top of his cane.

"You said it."

Mr. Wonka's head shot up again at the sound of Charlie's voice. The boy's eyes and nose appeared in the space below his wall. He was looking at Willy. "You said it, Mr. Wonka. Family."

He did! He hadn't even realized it, but he'd said that blasted word he'd never been able to say since he'd left home! Warmth rushed throughout him when he suddenly understood what that meant.

"Hey, yeah!" Like so many times before, the chocolatier's mood went from sullen and serious to extremely energetic and happy. "I did say it, didn't I? Family. Family. P-Parents? Hey, I can say that, too! Isn't this great?"

And happened such a cold repose from Charlie after that that Willy almost squeaked. "And you know what that means?" he demanded with new authority. "We have to go to the hospital now, Charlie! Did you know, whenever an Oompa Loompa has to leave their little Loompalings behind to go to work, they get so gosh-darned anxious that their hair turns green and they develop this horrible, itchy rash! We can't let that happen to you parents, by golly!"

Charlie shook his head vividly from below the old, cracked wall. He pushed himself to his feet, left the confines of his room, climbed down the ladder and came to stand before the chocolatier with a reluctant smile on his face. "No," he said with a business-like edge. "Definitely not."

"Wonderful, then! We'd better hurry.

The boy's response came in the form of a stiff nod. But Mr. Wonka was no longer looking at Charlie. He was staring absently at the far window with a tremendously wistful look upon his face.

In the odd chocolatier's mind, a great deal more was taking place…

The light on the wall was dimmed, making it difficult to see the bed or the woman in it. She was lying, propped against a mound of white pillows under the glow of the single lamp. Her hair lay damp and matted against her temples; a few strands stuck to her face. Although her eyes were closed, her breathing was irregular and her eyes twitched beneath the restless lids.

A man entered the room behind Willy and shut the door with a gentle click. A moment later, Willy felt someone place a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"She's very sick," said the bass, brusque voice. "We're going now. Say goodbye."

"But-" the boy began to protest, twisting his head around to look up at his father.

Dr. Wonka's grip on his shoulder tightened. "Don't argue with me, Willy. Your mother needs her rest, and you do yours. You have school tomorrow."

"Will…"

Willy's head jerked back to his mother. Her deep violet eyes were open and staring directly at the grim-faced Dr. Wonka with such animosity, it was hard to believe they had once been married. Then she smiled as her gaze passed to Willy.

"It's okay. I was just resting my eyes," she said with what was left her frail voice. "Wilbur, I want to speak to Willy. Just Willy."

The fierce grip on Willy's shoulder was released, much to his concealed relief. Although he couldn't see his father's face, he knew that he was in trouble, and there would probably be yet another lecture tonight on the responsibilities of a sole parent and how much of an indecent his mother was. He didn't care. Willy didn't believe any of it, anyway, just as he didn't believe that candy would make him sick.

Dr. Wonka closed the door a little less gently when he left the room, leaving Willy alone with his mother. He really wanted to be able smile, but his headgear and the straps made it impossible. Instead, he moved to the edge of the bed and held out his hand. His mother took it and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Then, as if that endeavor had drained the last of her strength, her arm slid back to the bed.

"You've grown so much," she said dreamily. "Oh, Willy, does he make you wear that ghastly contraption all the time?"

Willy glanced down and shook his head. "No," he said. "I get to take it off for bed and whenever I get my picture taken. Mom?"

"Yes, love?"

"Are you going to be okay?"

The look she gave him then was so tender that Willy just wanted to break down crying and curl up into a small ball. He'd never been able to hug her before, ever, because she was too sick and frail and she might get hurt if he did. Just like he was never allowed to have chocolate. It wasn't fair.

"Willy," she said softly, reaching very carefully to cup her hand over his. "I'm going to tell you a secret, okay? Promise you won't tell anybody else, not even your Dad."

He nodded eagerly. He'd do anything!

"Do you know what will happen if…if I don't get better?" she asked, as if selecting her words very carefully.

Willy shook his head this time. He was eight, and there was no television set at home. His father never read the paper, and none of the kids at school had sick parents. Every time he asked his dad about his mother, he would just grunt and return to whatever task he was currently doing.

His mother sighed. "Willy, I love you. But if by some chance I never do get better, I will have to go to sleep. You can't see me after that happens."

Fear seized him. Willy jolted and looked at her anxiously. "Why? I could see you after you wake up. You don't want to see me anymore?"

"Oh, Willy, of course I do!" Her voice croaked and her eyes were glassy now. "But this is a different kind of sleep, love. Being sick makes someone very, very tired. I'll be too tired to wake up, even if I really wanted to."

"But you'll get better!" he exclaimed, gripping the loose bed sheets in his hands. "You can't go to sleep, Mom, you can't!"

"I have to, Willy," she whispered. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. "I have to go to sleep. But I will always, always love you. Don't forget that, okay?"

Willy stared downwards with a scrunched expression. He didn't say anything.

His mother squeezed his hand again, and he looked up.

"Okay?" she said again.

He sobbed once and nodded. "…'kay."

"Mr. Wonka!"

He jumped out of his empty daze and realized that both Charlie and Grandpa Joe were staring at him strangely. Willy opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it. The hurtful memory was still fresh in his mind. Suddenly, he didn't think that going to the hospital would be such a good idea.

"Flashback again?" Charlie wanted to know. The usual lightheartedness was gone from his voice.

Mr. Wonka nodded very slightly with a grim smile. "Yeah. Sort of. Shall we?"

Charlie made to lurch after the chocolatier when he turned to leave, but Grandpa Joe caught his arm kindly. They watched Mr. Wonka disappear through the crooked door and stood for another moment in gloomy silence. Then Grandpa Joe gave Charlie a quick, but reassuring hug.

"It'll be all right, Charlie. You'll see," he said with a spark of enthusiasm. "Go with Mr. Wonka. Tell us all about it when you and your mom get back."

His encouragement worked. A foreboding weight lifted from Charlie's shoulders a moment later, and he abruptly felt as if he could take on a whole army of Snozwangers. "Thanks, Grandpa," he said. Not daring to wait a moment longer, he dashed out the door to catch up with Mr. Wonka.

Funny Word Glossary

Dunglehobber- A small, furry rodent the size of a field mouse found exclusively in Loompaland. They are often kept as pets by the Oompa Loompas.

Galoompa- What Oompa Loompa's usually label other humans. (translated as 'Big Loompa')

Hopglump- A bizarre creature that resembles a very fat frog, only the size of a large dog and is covered in bumpy brown skin. Harmless, as they consume ground moss through the hundreds of little teeth on it's throat. Named after it's peculiar method of travel: hopping about on three enormous back legs.

Sneak Peek: Renewed hope and the reason why some FBI agents should never be trusted.