WHO: Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark WHAT: Peeta being possessed WHERE: Outside Cindy's house WHEN: Sunday morning, around 7:00am WARNINGS: Violence, graphic descriptions/situations, language PROGRESS: Started via gdoc, still in progress
Admittedly, Peeta had been slightly disappointed at the fact that the boy had taken Kimberly Corman's dog. He had been hoping to talk Katniss into letting Prim adopt him as an extra form of protection. After all, Connor had said that was why his friend had acquired the dog in the first place; because he was intimidating but gentle. It had sounded like a perfect solution for Prim on a two-fold level, as far as Peeta was concerned. She would have a form of protection when he and Katniss weren't around and the dog might perhaps at least partially fill the void that Buttercup had left when the mangy thing had been taken away by the force that had crippled the majority of the town. Since that was out, he would have to settle for the continued efforts that he and Katniss put forth to make sure that the perimeter of Cindy's house was secured; that the salt lines were in place and that they continued to fix them whenever the wind or a breeze made a break. For the most part, they'd secured that easily enough with some glue beneath the first line, but it never hurt to make sure that it was fortified. Especially now.
Once outside, Peeta and Katniss split up as they always did. Peeta moved westward and Katniss eastward until they met back in the middle. They were always within a shouting distance, just in case, but they could cover more ground more efficiently this way. It had taken some negotiation on both of their parts to come to the agreement because neither had wanted the other to go outside at all. He could hear Katniss more than he could see her in only a few brief moments.
It was mostly business as usual, however cold it was outdoors, the breeze was light and the salt glued down was mostly intact. Peeta moved down the driveway re-salting what he could, re-chalking fading points in Devil's Traps, and listening for Katniss all the same, just in case. He hadn't noticed at first that he'd stepped outside the salt line at the far edge of the driveway. When he did, he realized that he'd kicked away a whole foot wide section of the salt. "Dammit..." he muttered, frowning and crouching to re-salt it. The sound of twigs and leaves crunching underfoot caught his attention and he turned only just getting back up to his feet when the older man he hadn't recognized had snagged his amulet, yanking it off his neck and leaving an angry red tear in his skin at the nape in its wake. The damn thing was quick, too, because he'd only managed to open his mouth to call for Katniss and reach for his knife when he was assaulted with a thick black smoke.
It burned down his throat and into his lungs as it went; he could feel himself being pushed down, down, down, lower and lower inside himself and he already knew what was happening — remembered what Meg had said on the boards — but it was too late to do anything about it. The last thing Peeta was consciously able to do was pull out his phone and open a new text message to Katniss, meaning to warn her off of him, but before he could send it, he had been overcome.
The demon stretched Peeta's neck muscles and broad shoulders, settling into its new meatsuit. This would do in a pinch, he supposed. The kid had looked better when he'd been crouching. If he'd noticed the kid's handicap, he'd have waited for the girl. Shitty luck, that, a goddamn cripple. Great. Still, the kid was strong and athletic. He was big. Bigger than most of the other kids his age the demon had scouted while he'd still been in hiding in the local high school's principal. Fat fuck. He'd been fucking worthless, that was for sure. The power that came with his position had only managed to make it harder to hide and he'd decided that it might be safer to find someone younger and quieter. He'd skipped the main part of town where the others were looking for bodies; that was too easy and too dangerous all at once. Those people were already on a witch hunt. He'd moved around a few houses in the area for a few days and had only noticed one with any significant activity outdoors. These two stupid kids came out nearly every hour, every day. It wouldn't be difficult for one of them to misstep sometime or another on their ridiculous rounds. He'd always watched from afar and mostly he'd stalked the girl because she'd looked easier. ...she was hotter too, though, and he'd seen the two of them stealing kisses outside. That wouldn't suck. The boy was bigger and he got to make out with her. The boy it was.
"Ahhh, yeah, this is better," he muttered to himself, deleting the text message and stuffing the phone into the kid's pocket. In spite of the fucking pegleg bullshit, this kid felt much better. He was young and agile, the demon noticed as he moved around, settling into the new form. And strong in his own rite, the demon realized gleefully as he bent to heft the principal's corpse over his shoulder to hide him in the woods. It wouldn't do for the girl — Katniss. Ahhh, all right, it was Katniss, he realized as the boy's consciousness started to meld with his own — to see the body. That'd be an awfully big red flag. Difficult, really, to cover that once it'd been noticed. Peeta and Katniss, he thought, rolling his eyes as he swung the principal down and around, tossing him a few yards into the thick woods. Fucking stupid names. And Prim, that's no fucking better. Wonder which one she is...
Old, battered, useless, fat fucking meatsuit discarded and hidden by the brush, the demon grinned and made his way back toward the driveway. It only took a few minutes for him to find a spot where the ground was still a little soft and he kicked the dirt away until he managed to break the salt line just enough to allow himself to get in, but not quite enough for the girl to notice if she wasn't specifically looking for it. While he waited for her to come back around, he took the amulet off the string and tossed it unceremoniously into the woods behind himself, tying the string together where he'd torn it off the kid to begin with and placing it back around his neck, tucking the long end of the string under the kid's shirt. She'd be none the wiser. "Looks good over here," he called out, standing in the driveway, one foot covering the break in the salt line and the other just inside. Hey, if he was lucky, he might get one of those kisses before he really had some fun with her...
Peeta was restless inside, attempting to fight his way back to the surface. "Oh, no you don't. Not yet, kid," he muttered under his breath. "I'mma have some fun with your pretty girlfriend first. And maybe that sister of yours." He paused. "Ohhh...not yours...sister of hers that you wish was yours. Well, isn't that just fucking adorable. She's next. Maybe I should make Katniss watch, that could be fun..." He paused again, smirking and smug at the weak attempts to regain control by the boy crushed far beneath the demon. "But your girlfriend...she's a hot piece of ass, ain't she? How the hell did you bag her, you crippled fuck?" he wondered aloud. "Meh, no matter. She's mine now, buddy boy."
While he waited for Katniss to meet him back in the middle, the demon closed his eyes, and reopened them, pushing down the black pupils in favor of Peeta's so that she wouldn't be able to tell right away. The breeze had probably already carried away the scent of sulfur or at least had faded it enough that maybe she wouldn't notice. The demon took the opportunity to focus on Peeta's conscious and subconscious mind, grinning here and there as he saw things he was certain that kid wouldn't want him to; all the dirty little things he daydreamed about secretly. Things the demon wondered about, whether they were memories or fantasies. Memories from Panem. District 12. The 74th Hunger Games — dear God, this kid wasn't even a real person! — the Quarter Quell. Throwing bread in the rain. Kissing in a cave. Having his leg amputated. The beach. Being mauled by teenage girls mistaking him for Josh Hutcherson — which, for the record, was also a dumb fucking name. A crypt. Doreah. Jenny. River. Simon. Kal. Rachel. Cato. Clove. Marvel. Glimmer. Rue. Thresh. Haymitch. Effie. Cinna. Portia. Chloe. Oliver. Tom. Cindy. Pete. Jessica. Kimberly. Nate. Kaylee. Kon. Ariel. Allana. Sam. Were these his friends, his enemies, or a combination of those? Were they still here? Had they ever been here at all? ...some of them. Not all of them. Prim. Ohhh, that was Prim. Well, wasn't she a cute little thing?
By the time Katniss came into view again, the demon knew all of Peeta's dirty little secrets, like the way he jacked off in the shower every fucking day because his woman didn't put out. Disappointing. Or the way that sometimes he looked at Prim in her cheerleading uniform and pretended not to notice that she was growing tits or the way that if she bent over just enough, those spanky pants were easy to see, because he knew he shouldn't be noticing and he shouldn't be peeking because she was Prim and she was like his sister and that was wrong and bad and he would never, ever tell. ...well, he wouldn't have, anyway. He might now, just for shits and giggles.
The way that he hated Katniss learning to hunt and he hated Cindy a little bit for taking her along; he hated Pete even more. The fights for the driver's seat on the way to work. Katniss skidding into the hallway and falling on her ass trying to steal the keys when he’d been in the shower...that was probably as close to getting laid as this kid would ever get. A ghost of a tribute beating the shit out of him. The complex. Watchtower apartments. Stark's company, gone now, poor Peeta; no more income.
He knew all of the things Peeta knew. He knew that Katniss trusted Peeta with her life and that was a very important piece of information. He also knew that Katniss loved Peeta very much and that if he played his cards right, she wouldn't hurt Peeta at all to free him of the demon. She wouldn't have it in her. Not when he was wearing Peeta. Oh...this was just too precious. "Hey," he said with a genuine smile as though he were happy to see her. ...he was, honestly, but not for the reason he suspected she would think. "All good out back?"
Katniss swung down from the low branch of a tree at Peeta’s call. She’d planned on climbing the pine to the top to get the lay of the land, see if anyone had been walking through their woods recently, but it could wait. Out here, if one of them called, even an all-clear call, the other always came right away. Left over instincts from the arena wouldn’t allow her to feel easy after Peeta had just exposed his position like that, even if it was fine, a perfectly safe thing to do with her right here and Cindy not much further away. She was used to those instincts however, to the warning bells they sounded so often as to be almost ignored, and as she landed lightly on her feet and set off to find her boyfriend she was even smiling slightly, enjoying the fresh air and the thought of being alone for a little while.
It wasn’t, of course, that she minded her sister’s company, or Cindy’s, only that lately, now that she and Peeta had been an actual couple for a while, she had been able to relax enough to think about things that weren’t exactly comfortable to consider while her baby sister was sitting between her and Peeta on the couch, babbling away about plants or school or what “adorable” thing her hideous cat had done that day. That was definitely not the appropriate time to think of the way the back of Peeta’s shirt hitched up slightly when he’d lifted the couch so that Prim could get something out that had fallen behind it the other day and she’d seen the muscles in his arms and back flexing or to think of the things it was so much easier to do at night when the house was quiet and it felt like they were the only two people in the world, things that had lately been making her feel less instead of more satisfied so that she knew what she wanted but not quite how to navigate her way to it, not just yet.
Not that this is a great time to be thinking about that either, she chided herself, and jogged towards the sound of Peeta’s voice. When she reached him, she returned his smile, looking at him instead of the salt lines (her first mistake, she would think later, getting distracted like that, not double-checking) and nodded. “All clear out back,” she confirmed, “I was about to climb a tree and get a better view of the property around us, but I can do that from anywhere on the property.” She stepped closer to him, still smiling (she’d been smiling more these days, and it felt odd, because mostly when she smiled she did so intentionally, not as an accident, not as something natural, and now she caught herself doing it in odd moments, when it was quiet, or when she looked at him sometimes, just automatically) and put her hands in her pockets, as relaxed and content as anyone could be in the middle of a demonic siege. “No trouble out here?”
Peeta could hear Katniss coming toward who she thought was him and he thrashed again deep inside himself, trying to come to the surface; to tell her to get away, but he was being ignored. The demon flinched just slightly and reached a hand up to rub his shoulder as if a sore muscle had caught his attention, as a cover. She was smiling back at him and he couldn't help thinking how fucking easy it would be to just snap her neck and be done with it. That wouldn't really have been much fun, though, he thought and so, he smiled back at her.
"All clear," he announced and reached out to take her hand, pulling her closer still. He was careful to mind his strength and consciously made an effort to keep his touch gentle. Create the illusion of intimacy, not put up red flags; that was the plan. The closer she got and the more comfortable and safe she felt, the more fun this would undoubtedly be. "You wanna head in or...not yet?" he asked, letting go of her hand to tuck a piece of stray hair that had loosened itself from her braid behind her ear.
Not gonna happen, kid, the demon thought gleefully because Peeta was apparently a fighter. He was shouting and kicking and screaming in there but he'd waited too long and the demon had been able to bury him plenty deep inside where he'd never get to come out. Not while the demon had a say, that was for sure.
But all this sugary-sweetness was really just...fucking nauseating. He couldn't keep this up all day. "Come here," he commanded, but he minded the tone to keep it as playful as he could manage, a flirtatious sort of smirk sliding over the kid's lips as he looked back at the girlfriend through the kid's eyes.