AN: Yes, I'm still around. I have any number of excuses for the long periods of time between updates: School. School, school, school. The good (wonderful!) news is that the semester ends in less than two weeks. That means that I'll have all summer to get to work and, barring writer's block, I'll get updating in a more timely matter.

As far as any notes go for this chapter, I actually did have quite a battle against writer's block. The first draft was just not clicking for me, and it took many, many revisions to get it to a point where I felt confident enough about it to get it posted. So let me know any of your thoughts for this one. I think we're just about halfway through the story, so things will definitely be getting more exciting from now on. As always, thanks to ALL of my readers and reviewers!

Oh, and there's a little bit of a shoutout to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the 1971 version with Gene Wilder. I can honestly say that I love both movies equally, so I thought it would be fun to throw in a tie-in here and there. It shouldn't be too hard to spot :)

She felt twelve years old all over again. Knowing instinctively just what to do, Rowena flew from vine to vine with confidence and laughter. Charlie had jumped out after her, Willy not far behind him, and from their whoops and hollers and Willy's occasional one-worded cries ("Geronimo! Pistachio!"), it was obvious that they were enjoying themselves as much as she was.

The licorice vines were perfectly suited for swinging, and Rowena couldn't help but thank her lucky stars that she had been keeping up at the gym. Her arms were tiring already but she was far from ready to quit entirely. A break was in order. Landing on a particularly large and solid tree branch with a stumble, she realized too late that her high heels were not exactly the preferred footwear for that sort of thing. Keeping a tight hold on her vine, it was almost certain that she was going to stumble over the edge of the branch or at least wrench her ankle.

Disaster was averted in the form of Willy Wonka as his arm lashed out from behind her to wrap around her slim waist and steady her. She whipped her head around to face him, beyond surprised to find him practically appearing out of thin air right beside her. Their eyes locked and Rowena felt her breath hitch in her chest. She was absolutely positive now; his eyes were violet, an extraordinarily beautiful shade of violet. There was electricity and warmth in his touch, even if his hands were gloved, and Rowena stood transfixed beneath his otherworldly gaze.

Not a moment too soon, Charlie landed beside them, and the spell that held them frozen was broken. Willy pulled his arm away quickly, turning his back on the insurance agent and clearing his throat. Rowena could feel another blush coming on. She turned away quickly herself, hoping it would go unnoticed. "That was great!" Charlie enthused between gulps of air, completely unaware of the moment that had just transpired. "And you were great, Rowena!" Left with little choice, Rowena turned to face him. If she was lucky, her face would have returned back to its usual shade.

"Thanks, Charlie," she replied a bit weakly. Willy was facing away from both of them, apparently watching the Oompa-Loompas at work. Rowena could only guess what was really on his mind. Somehow she didn't believe for one second that he was as unaffected as he appeared to be. But she couldn't think of it…wouldn't think of it. What was there to think of, anyway? Nothing, she emphasized internally. Nothing at all.

"I could go on swinging for days!" Charlie was laughing now, though it was clear from his labored breathing that he was as winded as the rest of them just from those first few minutes. Rowena smiled at his enthusiasm, still enjoying at least in part the lasting effects of the pure adrenaline that had pumped through her veins for the first time in years.

"Me too," she agreed, absentmindedly brushing aside a golden lock of hair that had come loose. "Do you do this sort of thing all the time? Swing on the vines, I mean?"

"Well, not all of the time." Charlie placed his hands in his pockets, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "Sometimes we climb Fudge Mountain, or fly around in the Fizzy Lifting Drink Room."

"You fly in the Fizzy Lifting…what?" Rowena glanced from Charlie to Willy, who was still focusing on the jungle floor. Despite his averted gaze, he no doubt heard the conversation going on over his shoulder.

"The Fizzy Lifting Room, where the Fizzy Lifting Drink is made," he clarified without moving a muscle. "It's one of my greatest inventions yet. Just a few more months of testing and it's sure to take off!" He and Charlie giggled at the pun that Rowena was helpless to understand. Rolling her eyes at them, she awkwardly brushed a piece of lint from her cardigan. She gasped when Willy whirled back around unexpectedly, wreathed in smiles and flexing his gloved hands in front of them.

"Ready for some more?" he asked cheerfully, nodding at a nearby licorice vine. It was odd that his elegant top hat remained firmly on top of his perfectly coifed hair. She nodded, smiling tightly. First, though, she reached down to remove her pumps. Chanel be damned, she wasn't going to kill herself trying to land in them again…or risk the chance of another Willy-themed rescue attempt.

The only problem now was what to do with them. Her briefcase had been left behind on the platform they had entered on, so she couldn't tuck them safely in there. Her brow creased in concentration as she searched for a solution. She was blithely unaware that she was under Willy's scrutiny once again.

"You know, you're gonna need some different clothes." Her frown deepened as she examined her attire. A flared black skirt, harmless camisole, pink cardigan; her outfit was perfectly suited for a day on the job, if a little wrinkled from having to wear it two days in a row. Of course, said day usually didn't involve any sort of candy jungle antics, and who knew what else would be on the menu for the rest of the day.

"I'm not wearing the robe all day," she said, slightly panicked as she thought of the one she had slept in. It had been warm and luxurious, but that didn't change the fact that it was a robe.

"Of course not!" Willy laughed. "Don't worry, though. My Oompa-Loompas can get your things."

The idea was absurd as far as she was concerned, especially since she'd be leaving that evening, and she would have told him so. Opening her mouth to speak, she stopped short when a loud, blaring siren sounded all around them, accompanied momentarily by Willy's strange recorded voice. "Intruder alert, intruder alert, intruder alert…"

"No, no, no!" She groaned, already anticipating the repercussions of another attempted break-in. At the moment she couldn't care less who was trying to break in or why, lingering instead on the fact that it could possible mean that she would be forced to spend another night as a guest of the factory. Willy had gone even paler than usual, an effect that, truth be told, was rather eerie. He glanced first at Charlie, sharing a wordless exchange with the boy before turning his full attention back on Rowena.

Her heart, that blood-pumping traitor, gave a little leap. Honestly, it didn't make any sense to her! She wasn't exactly a stranger to men. While dating had not been her strong point in the recent past, it wasn't as though she had assumed the life of a spinster. Well, in some ways, perhaps, but not completely. So why, why, why did her heart insist on fluttering whenever Willy Wonka looked at her? She knew her type, and it was not childish, strange and eccentric—albeit undeniably gifted—chocolatiers. Not now, not ever.

"Somebody sure does want to get inside, Charlie," Willy said slowly, his words for the boy but his strangely accusatory eyes fixed on Rowena. Was he insinuating that she was somehow connected? Surely not…

"We'd better check it out, Willy." Charlie leapt onto a vine and wound his way down to the jungle floor, just as all of the Oompa-Loompas were doing with incredible speed. That left Rowena left alone with Willy, standing precariously on a tree branch high above the ground in a licorice jungle with her high heels clasped in her hands. Lovely.

A horrible thought struck her. A good thirty feet from the ground at least, just how on earth was she supposed to get down? Fitz had always let her latch onto him as he lowered them both back to the ground…

No, oh no. No.

Willy grinned. She mentally added mind-reader to his growing list of quirks. His face was drawn, his skin still pale, and yet he appeared to be totally pleased. Offering his gloved hand to her with only the slightest hesitation, he seemed to know exactly the predicament she was in. "I'm sure I can manage getting down on my own," she insisted, feeling desperate to stay as far away from his touch as possible. "Really, it doesn't look so hard…" She peeked over the edge, eyes widening at the realization of just how high up they truly were.

He easily called her bluff. "Come, come, my dear Rowena. You certainly don't want to miss out on all the excitement."

"You mean you want me to come with you to investigate this intruder business?"

"Yes. I do." He spoke solemnly, extending his proffered hand more insistently. "Now, we mustn't dilly or dally, Rowena." She eyed him distrustfully, hesitating one moment more before placing her hand in his.

She regretted it almost immediately. The electricity was there again, so tangible and startling that she couldn't ignore it. The flimsy excuses she was continually making were falling away at a rapid rate, crumbling to dust in the wake of the powerful surge of strange emotion that coursed through her. Heaven help her, she was attracted to Willy Wonka. She could find no rhyme or reason to it, no practical enough explanation in the wide world to account for it, but it was blaringly, excruciatingly true.

And now he was drawing her close to him, wrapping an arm around her waist…

"Are you sure this is necessary?" she all but squeaked, her dark eyes large and luminous and dangerously close to revealing more than just mere discomfort.

Willy angled his head slightly, smiling in a way she had never seen before. He almost looked…dashing? Was that the right word? Dashing, charming…understanding? That, or she was losing her mind. "I'm quite sure," was his flippant response, and his smile broadened. "Hold on tight, 'cause here we go!"

He backed over the edge smoothly and Rowena had no choice but to throw her arms around his neck, pressed tightly against him by his surprisingly powerful arm. Incredibly enough, his scent was somehow different now; peanuts and cinnamon. It was not a combination found in the colognes of department stores but the effect was powerful nonetheless. With her face very nearly pressed into the lapels of his jacket, it took whatever threads of self control she still possessed to check her impulse to inhale his delicious scent too deeply.

They descended to the jungle floor in a slow spin, and before she knew it, they were grounded beside Charlie. Willy released her immediately, his hand lingering behind her shoulder briefly to ensure she kept her balance this time. Rowena made another mental note to destroy her blasted shoes as soon as possible. Those expensive fiends had thrown her into Willy's arms twice now, and if it happened a third time, she was sure that she would go mad. Graceful in pumps she may not have been, but she would not easily resign to playing the damsel in distress. Having spent the bulk of her life abroad and beyond and facing danger and doom with some frequency, she vehemently did not need to be swept off her feet at every turn.

Even if it was, dare she admit it, rather nice in some small—very small—way.

Clearing her throat in an effort to clear her thoughts, she glanced between Willy and Charlie several times, waiting for someone to lead the way. Willy appeared to be all business again. He had a factory to defend, and by heavens, he would defend it. It was his life's work, his pride and passion, and no threat would go unchallenged so long as he was there.

He stepped away from them, approaching an assembled group of Oompa-Loompas. Charlie drew Rowena's attention away, explaining as best as he could. "It's probably nothing again, just some kids playing pranks or something silly."

"Does this kind of thing happen often?"

Charlie thought on it a moment, a frown creasing his brow. "Only once since I've been here, when my dad had to work late and couldn't figure out how to get back inside the factory. Other than that, I don't really think it's ever happened before. Not like this, anyway."

"How odd," Rowena muttered and was grateful that Willy wasn't nearby to protest the quiet tone of voice. Charlie nodded in Willy's direction, and Rowena turned to see that he was gesturing impatiently, his cane miraculously back in hand—no doubt retrieved by an Oompa-Loompa. The pair hurried to join him, following the serious-faced security detail that led them through a winding path to a wide metallic archway that emptied into another corridor. Two panels slid silently closed behind them, but she was focused on the Glass Elevator that waited before them.

Rowena was ushered gently by Charlie back into the contraption. With five or six Oompa-Loompas joining them this time around, they were considerably more crowded, but she didn't mind in the least. On the contrary, it was thrilling for her to be standing right beside them. Better still, they kept her and Willy pressed against opposite walls and as far away from each other as possible. None of them looked her way, totally focused on the task at hand. One of them pressed a button, the elevator lifted from the ground and they were off.

Little did she realize that their destination did not lie within the factory but rather outside of it. The elevator zoomed along, taking all sorts of abrupt changes in direction. But then they were going up and up, and sunlight was suddenly streaming in all around them. No one else in the elevator seemed to think anything of it, and so she held her tongue, marveling at the cloudless blue sky and the wide view of the sprawling city surrounding the factory.

They hovered above a long stretch of flat roofline, and with perfect smoothness the elevator landed and the engines shut off. The doors chimed cheerfully as they slid open, and taking the initiative, Willy marched away, his Oompa-Loompas following behind in a flawless v-formation, and Charlie and Rowena bringing up the rear.

More Oompa-Loompas were already at work, setting up a perimeter around the apparent crime scene with yellow caution tape and gathering anything they considered evidence with extreme efficiency. They were silent in their work, though Rowena could see Willy up ahead of them communicating with some form of sign language. The point of the break-in was obvious. A large ceiling window had been smashed through and only jagged pieces of glass remained along the border. Charlie went to join Willy, and Rowena began to skirt the window's perimeter herself, careful to stay out of everyone's way.

"It doesn't make any sense," Willy said from the other side of the window. "Why would someone want to break into the Nerds Sorting Room? I know that they're hopelessly delectable and oh so hard to resist, but is this really necessary?"

"Maybe they weren't looking for a specific room," Charlie remarked, his brow furrowed. "Maybe whoever it was just knew that this was the easiest window to climb to."

"It's still a long way up," Willy added, nodding in the direction of the three story drop. "And really, I could see someone wanting Nerds so badly that they just--"

"It could be that they weren't trying to break in at all." The pair looked at Rowena questioningly. Even the Oompa-Loompas stopped what they were doing to give her a strange look.

"What makes you say that?" Willy asked slowly, watching her appraisingly. Rowena pursed her lips, walking around the window once more. "Well," she began, pointing to an ordinary-looking hammer that lay a foot from where she stood, outlined in a no-nonsense manner by white chalk. "It looks like whoever did this used this hammer to break through the glass."

"That's not exactly rocket science now, is it?"

She ignored Willy's dry remark and continued. "They managed to climb up three stories and smash through the window, then dropped the hammer and fled after the alarm went off."

"Go on…"

"I was just thinking that if they left behind the hammer, chances are they could have left behind anything else they were planning on using to get inside."

"Like…rope?" Charlie hazarded a guess.

"Right, Charlie, anything that they could use to lower themselves to the bottom of that room down there."

"That would be the Nerds Sorting Room," Willy supplied, and by all accounts he looked like he was going to launch into another one of his upbeat narrations. Rowena cut him off before he could continue, ignoring his rather putout look.

"All right then, the Nerds Sorting Room. It's too far to just drop inside, and it's not as if nobody would notice. It's broad daylight, and there must have been plenty of Oompa-Loompas working in the room. And a hammer? That's hardly the kind of high tech equipment that an experienced burglar uses, now, isn't it? "

"Criminals aren't always known to be master-minding geniuses, starshine. Don't you think it's possible that they panicked and just happened to forget the hammer? They did have to get down, after all." Willy interjected.

As if on cue, a pair of Oompa-Loompas pointed to a length of sturdy rope that had just been pulled up after dangling from the side of the building. "There's your escape route," Rowena pointed out. "It's possible they simply forgot the hammer, yes, but I don't think it's likely. If you ask me, it looks like little more than a prank. That, or someone is trying very hard to get your attention."

Willy obviously did not like the sound of that. He wrinkled his nose at the suggestion, slowly making his way around the window to stand at Rowena's side. Planting his cane and leaning as far over the window's edge as he could, he pondered on her words and took in all of the pieces of the puzzle she had just pointed out. He would have no doubt arrived at the same conclusion momentarily and he was determined not to feel irked that Rowena had been the first to point it out. Unless there was some other, far less pleasant reason she seemed to know so much.

"I know that my chocolate is delicious and my candy just impossible to pass up…ahem." He cleared his throat meaningfully, throwing her a brief and annoyed glance. She refused to take the bait, preferring to leave her decision to stay away from sweets out of the equation. "But no one has ever tried to…get my attention, as you say, which isn't to say I don't have enemies—plenty of other confectioners the world over are jealous of my success, of course. That's what happens when you're the 'best darn guy who ever lived,' as I once heard it put."

"I'm sure your great humility has nothing to do with any of this," Rowena remarked dryly.

Luckily, Charlie interrupted before Willy could respond to that. "If someone's trying to get your attention, Willy, what is it they're trying to say?"

"Well, that's the million dollar question, now, isn't it?" he mused, holding up a hand as if to examine his nails. "I don't suppose Miss Chantilly here has any thoughts on that?"

"No, not really," Rowena sputtered, a little thrown by the way he addressed her. Hadn't he been emphatic on the use of first names not so very long ago? Her suspicions that she herself was seen as a suspect were growing, and it only made her more defensive. "Need I remind you, Mr. Wonka, that before my superiors sent me out to your factory, I knew next to nothing about you? I'm just an insurance agent. I don't even eat chocolate, for heaven's sake!"

"Ah ha! So perhaps you have a vendetta against chocolate, then. Is that it?"

"Is that what?" Even Charlie was growing confused by Willy's sudden attempt at interrogation.

Rowena clasped her hands together in agitation, resisting the urge to simply turn her back on him and storm out of his factory. She was just doing her job. How dare he imply that she was in any way involved! "Mr. Wonka! Let me state once and for all that I have nothing to do with these little break-ins of yours. I'm terribly sorry about all of this, but I am just doing my job. I can hardly help it if all of this nonsense is happening while I'm here, but I assure you that it's coincidence and nothing more!"

Her voice had risen with every word until she was practically shouting. Silence greeted her, along with the wide-eyed stare of every person on the roof with her. There was no way to hide the blush that crept along her skin. It wasn't as if she'd meant to shout at them, but the whole scenario was just so absurd. If Rowena Victoria Chantilly wanted to break into someplace, she knew far better ways to go about doing so. Not, of course, that she was about to share that little thought with anyone else.

"If you say so." In an instant Willy's voice had returned to that strange, chipper tone of his. It was mind boggling, really, the rapid rate at which his moods shifted. She could only stare at him stupidly, totally stunned at how quickly he had apparently absolved her of any guilt. The pink in her cheeks deepened and her jaw dropped. As he swung his cane up and started walking away, she remained firmly planted where she stood.

Charlie was rooted to the ground, too, by all appearances, a frown creasing his brow. Perhaps Willy was acting even stranger than usual, if Charlie's perplexed look indicated anything. "You two coming or what?" Willy called to them, by now having traipsed halfway back across the roof towards the elevator.

"But what about the investigation?" Charlie responded.

"Well, the Oompa-Loompas will let us know if they find anything else." Charlie and Rowena shared a puzzled glance, both shrugging their shoulders lightly. They moved to join Willy in the elevator, shuffling inside and waiting patiently for the chocolatier to push the button for their destination. Wherever it was they were headed to now, Rowena could have cared less. At this point, she was almost sure she was going to lose her mind long before the tour ended.