Categories: Spike, angst

Rating: PG-13 for vague allusions to adult subject matter

Archival: My site only. Please feel free to link to it at www.alanna.net/fanfic/cartography.html

Spoilers: None, though it's set post-"Wrecked"

Feedback: Treasured and pampered -- [email protected]

Summary: "He wants a map of the world that doesn't feature her at its center."

Shadows paint him like a canvas. He stands in a nowhere alley, watching a nothing vampire sucking dry a no-one person.

Spike watches as the other vampire loses his grip on the woman's arm. She slips to the ground. Fangboy grabs for her but nearly stumbles over in the process. It's a pathetic sight, really.

In the old days, Spike would've done it right. Snapped the neck quick as a lark, sank his teeth in smoothly as a knife in butter. Wouldn?t have left the woman flopping about like this other git is doing.

But there's a reason why those are the old days.

He watches with an almost passive interest now, the way judges watch figure skaters during the Olympics. When one's gone for so many months without the real thing -- blood from an actual just-dead human -- the stomach readjusts itself. He's gotten used to the feeling of animal or Red Cross blood swishing around in his belly. He has become, to his dismay, one who settles. Nowadays, he doesn't think he'd even like the taste of that woman's blood if it were on his lips.

Buffy and her gang may as well have turned him back into a human. His first instinct when he saw the vamp feeding off the woman in this alley was that he should've saved her. Grabbed his "something pointy" and dusted the predator, then carried the woman away to safety like some goddamned Byronic hero. Then he realized the woman was already dead. Nothing he could do.

He pretends he doesn't feel sorry for her. Wouldn't be fitting, would it?

"What's your place in the world?" Buffy had said, or something like that. Damned if he knew anymore.

Oh, hell, he knows what it is. His place in the world is to love her. To do right by her, even as she laughs in his face.

But he was too late this time. Spent too much time drinking in that bar, alternating between pretending he didn't live just for her and imagining what un-life would be like if he could just get rid of the sodding chip. Drank a few more pints when he realized he didn't want it gone. Threw his meager money down and settled his tab when he remembered that she hadn't exactly said she couldn't love him back. Stumbled out of the bar full of illusions of a future in which she would come to her goddamned senses and make good on her non-promise.

Then he saw a long-dead man sucking on a newly-dead woman and remembered that the world's a dark, dark place. And he was too late to save her.

Story of his un-life.

Give him another hundred and forty-seven days and maybe he'd be there in time.

Buffy would like that. He wouldn't tell her, though, because she'd just twist it into something bad.

"You know you wanted to join in the fun, Spike," she would taunt. She'd punch him hard and sweet, eyes full of mocking laughter. Then she'd either walk away or kiss him until the light behind his eyes turned blue.

Yes, that's what would happen if he told her. He knows her too well now, but he wishes he didn't. All she's brought him is the pain of unrequited love and the torture of having everything but knowing that even as he feels her surrounding him, she's far, far away.

Once you've tasted the dark chocolate in her, he thinks, you can't go back. Once you've spent a moment in her arms, in her body, you're changed forever. Can't hunt, can't kill, can't do anything but wait for the next time she deigns to let you in.

He loves it when she hits him, then he hates himself for loving it. She doesn't want a man who gets off on the fight, or, at least, she doesn't think she does. He wants to lay back and let her pummel him because that might make her feel pity and see that he's not something she can treat like dirt. But pride goeth before a fall, and he has too much pride not to fight back.

Funny, a year ago he was telling soldier boy that Buffy wanted a little demon in her man. He's her bitch, and he's not ashamed to admit it. He sure as hell has demon in him. But she won't let him be her man, except when she's needy and in full-on "I hate you" mode. Then she wants to ride him until they're both raw in places where the sun will never shine.

Maybe his place in the world is to love the blinding hell out of her until she sees the light. And isn't that the stuff of those Byronic heroes? Tilting at windmills until they melt in the sun?

He wants a map of the world that doesn't feature her at its center. But she's his world and that's that.

He wants a map that doesn't feature a hundred winding snakelike roads around him, pulling him in all directions until he's standing in alleys, torn between wanting to taste that woman's blood and wreaking justice.

Damned thinking is starting to make his brain hurt.

He takes a step forward, out of the shadows to where the other vampire can see him.

Buffy will never have to know about it.

A sudden rush of euphoria nearly knocks him down.

The other vamp looks up at him in surprise. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asks, a growl in his voice.

Spike slips into game face. God, it feels so good.

"Just keep your mouth shut," he orders as he moves in for the taste.

"Want some?" the vamp asks, ignoring the command as he holds out the woman's body like an offering.

Spike smiles and lets his fangs slip over the edge of his lip.

"Yeah." He growls. "Yeah, I do."

Yes, this is where he's supposed to be.

He pulls the now-uniform stake from under his coat.

Before the vamp can even register what's happening, particles of him are swirling around Spike's feet.

Spike leans over and arranges the woman's body into a more dignified pose for the police to find. A pool of blood spreads over the asphalt. He ignores it. She's still dead, but maybe next time she won't be.

He begins the long walk back home to the lighter side of Sunnydale.

Buffy doesn't come over here much. She'll never have to know.

This is all for him. He'll send off a letter to National Geographic tomorrow.

He thinks maybe he'll become a cartographer.

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END (1/1)

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