"Darn."

Willy sighed, studying the toes of his boots, and the indents they made on the carpet.

"Really, first try, it should have worked, but I guess, in tarnation, it didn't, cuz if it had, you'd've known."

"You can always tell me what it was," Terence suggested.

"I could, but why spoil it? It'll work eventually, and that reminds me."

Willy left the window, and headed toward his desk.

Terence, still clueless as to what Willy was on about, started to rise, to give Willy his place, and get back down the hill, but Willy, impatient, motioned Terence to stay as he was.

"You're not a jack-in-the-box, or even a Terence-in-the-box, so don't jump up like one every time I move an inch. It makes me nervous. I put you there. I want you there. I'll be here."

Terence wondered that Willy wasn't shooing him back to the moving project, but settled once again.

"We're not done?"

Alighting like a butterfly about to sip nectar, Willy balanced on the arm of the chair facing the double doors, his walking-stick draping itself casually against his thigh. Terence's otherwise ignored question earned him a flashing sidelong glance, complete with narrowed eyes and tight-pressed lips, but the cloud disbursed as instantly as it formed, and Willy only pointed to the saucer of candies.

"You were eating those. Did you like them?" Willy's voice grew silky as he spoke. "They're new."

Terence nodded agreement and affirmation, his thoughts of getting back to the project magically replaced by how worried that silky delivery should make him feel about eating 'new' candies, but Willy, otherwise unconcerned, quirked a brow, wanting more. Terence obliged, deciding they weren't, after all, in the Inventing Room… so the confections couldn't be that new… or, he decided he needn't worry, untested.

"They're tangy, and refreshing, but it was the different sizes, and their irregular surfaces that caught my interest. When you see them close up, they look like moon rocks, or meteor fragments… you know… like something from outer-space."

Willy, calm for a minute while the description held his attention, tapped his index finger against his cheekbone when it ended.

"Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. Now that ya mention it, they do kinda look like that. Hey!" Willy held up the finger he'd been tapping, brightening at the second person today to bring up the alternative to sticking out this sticky ol' fire swamp wicket.

"Ya wanna go to Space?"

It was hard to keep up with Willy's shifting moods, they were changing like lightning, but Terence, though wary, didn't have to think over that suggestion at all.

"Yes, I do. Have we time before dinner?"

Grinning at the first sentence, at the second sentence, Willy, rolling his walking-stick in his hand where it leaned against his thigh, next rolled his eyes, then rolled himself off the arm of the chair, and head down, walking-stick twirling behind his back, made a circuit of his office, like a panther pacing in a too small cage. Space was out. The earlier, ignored question, repeated like a litany in his head. 'We're not done?' They wouldn't be done until Terence coughed up why he was here, and if he did, it would only be the beginning, a terrifying idea, with the only idea more terrifying than that idea, the idea of not beginning. But Terence wasn't coughing, and time, as Terence so adroitly brought up, was running short.

"Have we time before dinner?… Time before dinner?… Time before dinner?" Willy chanted, eyes flashing, a speck of spit at the corner of his mouth. "What a boring consideration, old fish, when I'm suggesting adventure! Are you becoming a bore, Terence?"

Terence swiveled his chair as Willy circled, evaluating with alarm the degree of sneer he was hearing, wondering how much internal pressure it took to bring bile like that to the surface of someone so naturally cheerful. He'd never seen Willy this stressed by anything, but like fire fighting fire, the catbird seat he was perched in was all Terence needed to match the emotion.

"No, old fish, I'm sitting here wondering if I'm wasting my time. Because if I am, I'm all for eighty-sixing the whole shebang, and heading into Space with you, this very second. Blast off!"

Willy whirled, striding to the desk, gloved knuckles pressing into its leather top, amethyst eyes incredulous as he leaned across it, the collateral thwack of the walking-stick he still held filling the office as the wood trim took the unintended hit. All that had registered was the eighty-sixing.

"You'd walk away?" Willy whispered, aghast. He was glad for the desk. It was holding him up. "That's why you're here? You think you're wasting your time?" His voice was shaking, all trace of the sneer lost in anxiety. "What, in the whole, gosh, darn, tootin' wide world gave you that idea?"

Terence slid the chair he sat in back a bit, and folding his arms, his elbows resting on the chair's arms, he leant forward, matching Willy's intensity, but speaking ever so slowly.

"Not 'what?', dear chap. 'Who?' That's the question, and the answer would be you, Mr. Wonka. Today… this morning, when you left the Chocolate Room. You've arranged it since then so that no one can find you. That includes your Oompa-Loompas, and you did it in a way that freaked them out—"

"Oh, poppycock, they know—"

"Quiet!" Terence held up a hand, "I'm not done… even though they did their best to pretend that wasn't so… and we all know you do like to disappear. But the kicker is, you didn't meet Charlie, and after the concern you showed this morning, that's a bet I'd have lost, and I'd have almost bet my life."

Willy straightened, and took a step back. Bet his life? On what he'd do? Was Terence crackers? Thank God for 'almost'. And a knife between his ribs would hurt less than how he'd feel if he'd upset his dear Oompa-Loompas. As for the others, the entire point of leaving the scene this morning was NOT to upset these people. How contrary could they be? If this assumption were the fallout, it was entirely the wrong result.

"I trust you to keep Charlie safe."

"And doesn't that just tickle me pink," Terence cooed, "but that's not the point. I want to know if I'm wasting my time taking Charlie's house apart. You took a powder deciding to invite them in, and if you're taking a powder now, I'm thinking it's because you're changing your mind about letting them stay."

Willy opened the distance with another step back.

"Their house is already apart."

"And easily put back together, my dear Chocolatier. Isn't that the plan? Or better yet, you could substitute it… with almost any other house in this town."

Another step back.

"Well… there's that."

"Yeah… there's that." Terence brought his chair back in tight to the desk, leaning forward, arms still folded, the desk untouched. "So here I am. You tell me. Am I wasting my time? Are you wasting my time? Have you changed your mind?"

Silence.

Terence had finally asked what he'd come here to ask. Willy stood composed. He had considered this possibility earlier; had in fact, come darn near to changing his mind, the events of the morning making him think this change to his Factory was a change he couldn't make. To borrow from Emma, that made Terence's questions, with his accusatory tone, too true to contradict… not outright, anyway, and anyway, it didn't matter: the afternoon he'd spent had made the change seem possible after all. So even dreading the changes he'd have to make to make the change work, he hadn't changed his mind.

"Terence."

The pause was a long one, and Terence, sensing a relaxation, responded to the familiar pattern.

"Willy."

A sigh.

"Do you know why, as you earlier lamented, you sometimes don't follow me?"

Terence shook his head.

"Because you are more often ahead of me. But not this time…"

Willy's voice trailed off, and Terence didn't press. A respite was in order.

His psyche still shying from the choice he'd made—old scabs, hiding old wounds, about to be torn off—Willy made a three-quarter turn toward the window, as if it were a siren, keening a melody only he could hear; but he stopped at that, judging further retreat as yet another disappearance; small, but not the message he wanted to send. Being afraid of being afraid had finally gotten old—old enough to be gotten rid of—because the truth of it was, Afraid was getting in his way, and that didn't sit with him. He'd be afraid, and go through with this anyway.


I do not own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended. Thanks for reading, perhaps reviewing, and just in general, for stopping by.

Thank you, dionne dance. I hope you enjoyed the scene's continuation here, as much as the first bit. And there's more to come… though it won't be such a long wait. And thank you Linkwonka88, for your reaction to the previous chapter. Ifwecansparkle, thank you, thank you, to you as well, for your two reviews. They are always, whenever you can find the time, welcome.