Disclaimer: All people, places, and situations contained within this fanfiction with the exception of Sara Bucket and certain bit players associated solely with her are the sole property of the Dahl estate. I have no monetary claim to them and am not making a profit off of this work.
A/N: So… here goes. For those of you who will read this and go "WTF, he's not a rapist!" I can only say to trust me, because I have no such ridiculousness in mind. Everything will be revealed in time.
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If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand.
I hope you find out what you want; I already know what I am.
And if it makes you less sad, we'll start talking again.
And you can tell me how vile I already know that I am.
I'll grow old and start acting my age.
I'll be a brand new day in a life that you hate.
A crown of gold, a heart that's harder than stone.
And it hurts a whole lot, but it's missed when it's gone.
Call me a safe bet, I'm betting I'm not.
I'm glad that you can forgive, I'm only hoping as time goes, you can forget.
- "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot," Brand New
The bright summer sun slanted through the high window and hit Sara Bucket on the face, waking her from a dream of shifting colors. Her hindbrain told her that the light was too angled and clear to be the grimy low beam from the window of her tiny room behind the fireplace at home and her brown eyes snapped open, fuzzy with sleep. The light was not the dirty light that had invaded her every morning for eighteen years; nor was it the muted light of her wrong-facing window in the dormitories at college; nor was it the constant humming softness of the chocolate room's artificial sun.
Something stirred against her back, someone, and she froze. The easiest thing in the world was to turn over and look but she couldn't and her eyes scanned the room for any sign of who she was lying with. They settled on a pile of clothing, hers and someone else's, and draped across them like a defeated army's banner was a maroon velvet coat.
The person – It's Mr. Wonka, Charlie's Mr. Wonka, oh god what have I done? – he stirred against her again and his arm slipped lazily over her abdomen as he pulled her closer and buried his face in her neck. It was wrong – he hated touching and being touched; he could tolerate a friendly touch from Charlie and then only just –
but the evidence was there, pressed cool and dry against the skin of her back. They were naked, which she supposed made sense, because their clothing was on the floor. He exhaled and she shuddered as his breath ran across her neck.
"…Sara?"
There was a sleepy hum in his voice, a strange satisfaction that she knew would fade as soon as he realized what had happened, just as it had for her; an icy shockwave of impossibility drowning the last remnants of whatever insanity had gripped them both.
"Go back to sleep."
"…'kay…"
She didn't move as he breathed in and out again deeply, amazed at her own serenity. She knew she should feel something – will feel something as soon as the adrenaline rush is gone and she can think about the exact ramifications of what they've done – but at the moment there was just a muted roaring void and she was thankful for it. The void had eaten her memories of the night before and she hoped they'd stay where they belong, in that void.
She judged it safe to slip out from under his arm and grabbed the bedpost, balancing on her one good leg. Her cane was leaning against the other side of the bed that she refused to look at except out of the corner of her eye. Her right leg, shriveled and useless, barely touched the ground as she hopped over, using the bedframe to support herself. In her quiet horror, she somehow found the time to be embarrassed at the way her breasts jiggled slightly with each motion and almost laughed. Finally she grabbed the smooth stick of wood and pulled herself up, back ramrod straight from years of refusing to bend, and strode over to her clothing.
Another indignity awaited; Mr. Wonka's room was not designed for a cripple, and so she had to bend down and gather all her clothing before pulling herself up again with the cane's help and almost falling. She put all her clothing on top of his dresser and grabbed the edge, resting her cane against it and then dressed one-handedly with the ease of long experience. She had, after all, been crippled for nearly twenty years.
Her hairpins were scattered around the lush carpet and she abandoned the idea of finding enough to twist her hair up and back and keep it in place. She left it loose instead, flowing halfway down her back, pale gold compared to the light streaming from the window. It seemed incongruous to her that a recluse would design his room to receive so much light, but she knew full well she was incapable of thinking on his level. Charlie could, and for that she was grateful; the boy was always different, always set apart, loving and dreaming of things she learned to forget she'd ever wanted. He had a good place here – her leaving will not change that.
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An Oompa-Loompa was kind enough to guide her home. Not for the first time, she wondered if that was their real name, and if the story told about them was true. But the strange little people held their secrets and their silence, and to prove Mr. Wonka a liar – though Sara had no doubt he was an inveterate one – would hurt Charlie, and that she could never do. The being bowed solemnly before hurrying with gravity to whatever task she had interrupted and Sara called her thanks to its retreating back.
No one in the slanted house was awake yet, a small mercy. Sara slid past her sleeping grandparents on bare feet, holding her hard spinster's shoes in her hand and crept into her tiny room, shutting the door with a click not even the comparatively sharp-eared Grandpa George could hear. She sat down on the rusted iron bed with caution, relaxing slowly into the thin mattress so that the metal didn't creak and wake her parents, who slept just next door. They used to have the whole room, until she came home one day and found that for her thirteenth birthday – because she was a teenager now – Father had built a wall across it and said one half was hers.
Sara stared into the mirror across from her. The top of it was spiderwebbed with cracks and bits of the glass and silver backing within the hair-thin lines were coming loose, but she could still see herself. She looked, as far as she could tell, no different except that her hair wasn't pinned up. She knew by looking down that her black broomstick skirt was no more ruffled then if she'd slept in it, as she sometimes did when she stayed up too late improving her mind. Her blouse was also rumbled, but again only as if she'd slept in her clothes. If the night had left any physical marks, they were well hidden; she always covered as much skin as possible. In the summer she would change from high necks and tight long sleeves to a modest scoop-cut that barely showed the tips of her collarbones and looser sleeves, but that was the extent of it. She examined herself in the mirror, noting without pleasure that she had high, strong cheekbones, well-formed features, and a mouth in a permanent expression of tightlipped sternness.
There was nothing there to attract a flighty half-or-all-child like Mr. Wonka.
Was there?
Her memory lurched and threw up the closest thing it had to an answer…
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It was three weeks into summer and Sara was sitting just outside the house, reading and wishing vaguely that there was space for some real greenery. It wasn't that the candy foliage wasn't beautiful, because it was, and it wasn't that she found the constant smell of sugar wearing, because she didn't; it was just that her eyes ached to rest on something that wasn't glaringly perfect and gorgeously surreal for a change. Her family had wanted her to come and live with them when the Bostwicks had let her go. She could not fault her employers their decision, though she'd ferociously smothered her anger at the upper-class stupidity of it all. The Bostwicks and the Salts were old friends. It would have been unseemly to keep a tutor and governess who was the elder sister of the boy whose triumph had humiliated dear little Veruca so, especially given how she and Adelaide were such good little chums. Sara knew – because Adelaide Bostwick had whispered it to her in a fierce hug when the girl had found her packing in her room – that Adelaide had never liked Veruca, and now hated her even more.
So she was waiting, now, for the Landons and their brood – Elizabeth, Roland, Mary, Jemma, Franklin, Maximillian, and Samantha, if she recalled their names correctly from the interminable birthday parties – to return from their extended vacation in Greece. Landon and Bostwick were rivals, socially and in terms of business; once the Landons heard she had been let go, they were sure to hire her if only to spite the Bostwicks. The only amusing thing in the whole farce was that the Landon children and Adelaide had been great good friends, and Sara had often turned a blind eye to her charge sneaking out to go visit them. The Landons were a wild bunch, as Bohemian as the British upper-class got, and some gleefully malicious corner of her approved entirely of Adelaide's association with them.
But until then, she was living with her parents in the factory – living off Mr. Wonka, which made her uneasy. She was not the only one. Grandpa George had remarked quietly to her one day that before Charlie had won "that damned ticket, the Buckets never took charity nor lived at the mercy of any man."
"Sara! Sara, look at this!"
She looked up as Charlie raced towards her, waving something so quickly that it was little more then a red smear to her eyes. He pulled himself up just short of running her over and collapsed on the sugar-grass with the unbounded enthusiasm only small children and those who think like them possess, grinning his crooked little-boy grin. She smiled in response, feeling light-hearted as only Charlie could make her. He was such a good, sweet boy…
"Look at this, Sara. Mr. Wonka and I just put the finishing touches on the prototype."
She took the proffered item. It was a small red kite, sticky as all candy is after being held and smelling of sugar and glaze.
"It's a kite! See, look here, the cloth is raspberry, and the sticks are peppermint and it's got a licorice string, we tied it like this so the flavors wouldn't blend and it comes apart like so, you can even fly it, only it'll have to be much bigger because this it just a model…"
Sara listened without really hearing as Charlie pointed out all the features and explained in great detail the processes they had used to build it, including everything but the important secrets he was honor-bound never to tell. Most of the explanation involved the long series of failures before they'd found just the right thinness of raspberry cloth to have it work as a real kite, and left out the bit about how you made raspberry cloth in the first place. The ins and outs of candymaking were of no real interest to her, but the important thing was that Charlie was happy. He loved living in the factory, and working with Mr. Wonka, and that made everything else completely irrelevant.
Eventually Charlie ran off to show his creation to his grandparents and Sara's smile faded as she picked up her book again, only to start at a soft voice coming from over her left shoulder. The tone was surprised and a little stilted, but also somehow… interested?
"You know, you're really pretty when you smile."
She turned in time to catch Mr. Wonka walking away
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Sarah closed her eyes and lay back on the bed, cursing herself as a fool. Any sensible person would have taken note and been wary but not her, no – she was so convinced that she'd read Mr. Wonka properly, that he was too much of a child to be a threat and was only commenting as a child did… so of course, when he offered her a cup of some new chocolate drink he'd just invented she drank it with him, not wondering why he was asking her to taste-test it when there were plenty of other members of the family within shouting distance and she'd made damn sure he was intimidated by her; after all, she was a governess and a private tutor and could frighten any child with her steel spine and no-nonsense glare, it came with the territory.
The important thing was to get away. She still had some money in her bank account, enough to live on for a few months, and the Landons would be back from Greece soon and in the meantime she would scout out jobs at boarding schools or, if it came to that, public ones. And hopefully the void where last night should be would never fill with more then flashes of heated images and sensory memories of skin and sweat and strain…
Enough!
She would announce her intentions at breakfast and leave to find an apartment that very morning.