FOOLS FOR LIFE:

CHAPTER 42: WHITE ROOM

They had been fighting almost the entire night.

There had been bad news and good news. The bad news was that the jewel was pretty well guarded. Guard after guard, protector after protector. Warriors with swords, alien looking beings with claws, demons with horns that spat acid....none that they hadn't been able to handle but it was getting tiring now.

The good news had been that they came practically one at a time. Every time they defeated one, it's body instantly disappeared. And a door at the other end of one room would lead to a another identical looking room. And he new chamber had a new defender.

"What is this, a bloody computer game? We gotten any bonus points yet?" he had said.

"Does make you wonder if the nerd trio were hired to make this," Buffy had joked.

And they had opened the next door. And a new guard had attacked them. And they had defeated it. Their months of patrolling together had honed them as a team and they worked quite well together now. Many moves and strategies came without planning or words. And they won fight after fight. But the rooms just went on and on. And each guard was more powerful than the last.

Just after winning the last fight, Spike fell against the wall, while the defender's body disappeared like the others had. "This is not working...."

Buffy was panting, bent forward, leaning on her knees with her hands. "Like this could go one forever? You too having the feeling it probably will?"

He nodded. "Some magic thing. Even if we win every fight I'll lay you odds every single door leads to another room with more of the same."

"Except a stronger opponent every time....." she said with a grim look. "Sooner or later, we lose."

"Bollocks! There has to be an answer!" He kicked the wall in anger.

"Yeah," Buffy said sarcastically. "Maybe we can call Willow and Giles if they wanna do some researching on a rock with a million rooms in them."

Spike cursed and paced through the room, glancing at the door they could open. Which would have the next fight start as soon as they went in. He looked around. It was all white, all marble. Some pillars, some steps. The pillars in the corners had statues carved out of them, of armed creatures that resembled some of their former opponents.

"Ah, I hate that kind of magic. Makes no sense. I know we're not 'in' the rock, but in another dimension, but still. Someone made a couple of million rooms to guard a stone??" Buffy complained.

As she said that, Spike's eye caught something. Her words hit the right mark, and he noticed what he otherwise may have missed.

"No....I don't think so...."

"What do you mean?"

"Well....ever seen 'The Avengers" love?"

"Uma and Ralph? Sean Connery dressed as a teddy bear??" She pulled up her nose.

"No! Not that crap!" he growled with a touch of indignation. "No, the original. Diana Riggs and Patrick MacNee. They were the real Steed and Peel!"

He saw her raised eyebrows and stammered, "Hey, you know I watch a lot of TV. When I just got the chip in it was the pretty much the only thing that kept me sane in those early days. And now, well especially since Clem's been coming over to hang.....and you know, good old british show, that....."

She folded her arms and smiled. "Okay, I got it. Before you turn completely into one of the nerd trio, get to some point that could be useful to us."

"Right!" he said, growling a little at the comparison. "Well there's one episode where Mrs. Peel is in a room and every time she walks out of it she walks into a another room just like it. And she wonders if she's not...looping somehow."

"Looping? You mean....walking in circles? Only a few rooms?"

Spike shook his head as they both looked around. "Only ONE room...."

"Every time we enter it again...."

"Whole thing gets activated and spits out another guardian."

He pointed to a crack in one of the statues. "Could be wrong, but I could swear that same crack was on the same stature earlier. We're constantly entering the same room somehow."

Buffy looked at the crack. "Are you sure about that?"

He shrugged. "Got a close look when that big horned fella bashed my head against it."

Buffy nodded. "Okay, sounds plausible. In that wonky magic way. So now what? The door is not the way to go then."

Spike shook his head. "No...I don't know. Do wish we'd caught on a little earlier. Not that I mind a scrap or two, but it wore us out pretty good. And we're not here to play."

" 'Do wish'...yeah, wasn't there something about your wishing? Having real wish?"

"Yeah, something about me having a real need for a wish, and it can't be selfish."

Her eyes lingered on his or a second at those words. "Well....anything we can do with that then?"

"Maybe there's a different door that only I can find or something like that."

And with that they checked around the room, touching, feeling, probing, looking for hidden levers, Spike trying to focus on his real and genuine wish to cure Buffy, to see if that made him suddenly aware of something he couldn't see otherwise...but nothing was found.

"Maybe I have to think about my wish really hard, and how I want you to be better, and THEN open the door. Maybe then we'll get to a different room."

She looked at the door suspiciously. "And maybe there's a 15 ft demon behind it."

"Yeah, there is that..."

They stood in silence and stared at the door. "Okay," she said. "We try that once. If it's another guardian, and we beat it, we DON'T try it again. Sound good?"

Spike shrugged. "Well, not that great, but I can't think of anything else. Maybe it is this simple. It often is with big magical puzzles."

"Okay, let's go. Try it." She stepped back and braced herself.

Spike closed his eyes, and thought of her. Thought of his love for her, and focused on the guilt he felt for his part in the curse, and how much he wanted her to be cured. And with that he opened the door.

Another room. Empty like the others. The Guardians had always appeared only after they had entered the new room. But the disappointment was already there in that the room looked exactly the same again.

"Well....what do we do?"

She thought for a moment. "Maybe I can stay here and you go in there? See what that does?"

He shook his head. "No I'm the one with the selfless wish. And I know how a little of how this magic stuff goes. Don't want to risk you getting stuck in this empty room for all eternity. Maybe somehow I won't see you again, even though it's supposed to be he same room. And given the fighting we may have to do, let's not get separated."

She imagined being in this room alone forever, and swallowed. "Alright, what now then?" She started pacing a little and suddenly froze when she had her back to Spike.

"Spike......."

"What? Another guardian??"

"No..." She pointed her finger to the back of the room they were in.

Spike held on to the door, not taking any chances, and had to strain to look around a pillar and see the door on the other end where they had entered earlier. It was open. And he saw himself holding it open.

It wasn't like a mirror image. Because he saw the back of his head. He realized that was because he was looking back himself now.., looking to the back of that room ....and he saw another Buffy standing behind the 'him' in the other room. She looked at him and saw him just as the Buffy next to him did the same, looking into the new room.

"You....see...." he whispered. "You see us now in the new room too?" . She nodded. "Yeah in the room in front of us I see..me...and you....you're looking at me.. holding a door open...and I'm looking into the next room over there....as I'm doing here...and behind me in the last room....it's.....they're not doubles...they're us. This is all the same space isn't it? If we could see far enough....or far back enough...."

"We'd see 'us' repeated again and again..until infinity...."

She let out some air, and shivered. "Only one room."

"And we're about to enter it again." He swallowed. "There's even only...one door. And we're standing in it...over there...and over there..."

Buffy swallowed.

".....repeat until insane...." she whispered in a slightly scared voice

** **

TBC!