Summary: She loves his vulnerability. Meg muses on Sam.

A/N: Well, hard to say where this came from, but for some reason I just had to think about Meg's character and where she's coming from and where she'll be going in the series. I have to give a huge thanks to my beta, Cati, for her amazing feedback and for the insightful discussions into all things Supernatural.

Disclaimer: I am painfully aware of how I do not own these characters…

Seduction

She loves his vulnerability. He's a trained fighter, he's killed so many things, and she can sense his power. But as he sleeps beside her, he's so prone, so pure. She falls in love.

Many have fallen for her before. It doesn't take much. A sly smile, a seductive glance, and she can have her way with them. Sometimes she doesn't kill them. Sometimes she merely plays with them, pouncing and releasing like a cat with a wounded bird. She never has to work for it, not like she does with Sam.

Sam. Even his name sounds beautiful to her, and she's not sure why. Maybe it's the way he said it, maybe it's just him.

She reaches out and almost touches him in his sleep. He shifts slightly, subconsciously aware of her presence.

Her fingers lace through the tips of hair that curl away from his head. His skin looks smooth and she can imagine the finely tuned shape of his lean body under the layers of clothes. She studies the shape of his eyes, the way his hair covers his forehead, the rich coloring of his face in the garish bus depot lights. She memorizes him, his form and his soul.

He is beautiful, but that's not why she loves him. She loves him because he's powerful, so powerful, but can't identify the danger that is lurking right beside him. She loves that she could kill him so easily, and he would never know what hit him. She loves it more than usual, because he's the one, the only one—the one who should be able to sense her.

But she has blindsided him like the rest. There is a sweet victory in that.

He doesn't see that she's using his own story against him. He doesn't see that she's just enough like Jess to endear her to him, but just different enough to not trigger the connection. He doesn't see that she's part of it, part of everything, and that she's a link to the one thing he's really seeking.

She wants to kiss him, but she knows that wouldn't be appropriate. That's not part of the plan. It would tip him off, it would push him away, and she would lose the seductive power she now holds over him.

Her smile makes him smile. Her laugh makes him laugh. They are strangers, but Sam has latched onto her. He thinks she needs protection, and she loves that too. She lets herself become a mirror; he is so blinded by his own honesty that he does not detect her deceit.

She loves his pain. It radiates from him, it consumes his aura. He has been broken, he has been betrayed, but he tries so hard to cover both. Perhaps that is why he can't see through her guise—he's too busy putting on one of his own. He thinks he needs freedom, and she knows he craves it, but she knows the price it will be bought with every time he seizes it.

As she tells him his own life story, she realizes it's not freedom that he needs. She knows that he needs someone to tell him he's okay, that his feelings are real. So she plays to his empathy, gives him affirmation. Sam's only weakness is his sense of self, and she manipulates it with relish. His trust blossoms before her eyes. A little longer and she knows he'll follow her anywhere. It is beautifully tragic that his father never understood. His means of protection drove his youngest right into the line of fire.

She knows his history. She knows he looks for answers, and she smiles because she holds them. No one has ever told him that they understood him, that they respected his needs and wants – and lived. Because that is the threat. Acceptance is empowering, and Sam is powerful enough without it. It is not her will to delay, but she does not live for herself.

Sitting near him, she can see the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She can see he doesn't sleep deeply, so she barely moves as watches him, awed. After so much time, so much searching, they are so near each other. She can appreciate the beauty of their interaction, purity and deceit, and knows it is only the first and she prays it will never end. Part of her wants to him to reveal all the secrets she already knows, to grace her with his implicit trust, his friendship, his love.

But she only wants this for the poeticism. She only yearns for it so that the end will be sweeter. She tempts them all just to see them jump, just to see their shock when the end comes.

She thinks of the knife lying in her pack and longs to hold it. She wants to run it across his throat, scoring the skin, leaving a dribbling trail of red, just to see him bleed.

In her imagination, she cannot resist the ending. She would offer herself to him; she would give herself completely. And when she had truly conquered him that way, when all his defenses had fallen to her and he was naked before her, she would slice the knife across his throat, just deep enough to make the end inevitable, but long enough for the confusion to turn to understanding, to acceptance of failure. She wants him to know before it's over what she is and how close he came to satisfying his thirst for answers. And to see the look of defeat that would set forever on his beautiful features.

That is how she loves him most. She wants to catch the blood in her own hands, feel its warmth envelop her, touch his life, his essence, let it cover her. She wants to see his eyes as he dies, watch that spark that defines him fade away. His death would bring her to life.

The desire is potent and she has to contain herself. For she is more like the other. She understands him, and she wants to conquer him too, but not like she does Sam. The other will follow dutifully to his death. She is not afraid of him. She knows she is the better soldier. But Sam's power is foreign to her, his strength understated. He does not demand attention but evokes honesty. There is the strength of true compassion in him, and she knows it is his greatest asset, the one thing that could give him the advantage when the end comes.

She cannot help but wonder if she is too close, if he will see through her. But that mystery is part of the attraction. It makes his seduction of him more invigorating. She wonders if this was part of the plan all along, if this attraction is just a part of the destiny they are both fulfilling.

There is so fine a line between love and hate, and the way she flirts with it now makes her feel alive. She nestles down next to him and closes her eyes and listens to the soft sounds of his breaths. They come evenly and it lures her to a sleep where she dreams of love and blood and the sound of Sam's laugh.

She has seduced many men; her methods of seduction are flawless. But she has never shared so much with one person, she has never felt one so completely as she does Sam. For the first time, she wishes to disobey, to be like Sam and live her own life. All the others she can kill, but this one, whose death she craves, is the only one she cannot touch. It leaves her desperate, wanton.

As her mind lingers just below consciousness, she knows why. This is the only one who rivals her, the only one who could ever defeat her, the only one who has ever seduced her. She smiles in her sleep, savoring every moment that is to come.