Peeta Mellark

PLAYER
Name: Tai
Personal Journal: I
Plurk: really
Time Zone: freaking
Email: hate
Messenger: all
Previous Characters: of
Munhead/Musebox: you

CHARACTER
Name: Peeta Mellark
Canon: The Hunger Games
Age: 16
Demigod/Hunter/Satyr/Nymph: Demigod, Son of Demeter
Demigod abilities: Like the rest of his siblings, Peeta has control over plants, though he doesn't rely on it as much as some of the rest. He can tell good plants from bad, healthy from poisonous (HAH), and help them grow at accelerated rates. He also inherited a double dose of cooking ability from both of his parents, which shows up mostly as baking.

In non-demigod specific abilities, Peeta is strongly built and life in the bakery has lead him to unintentionally develop that strength, meaning he can throw around a hundred pounds of flour without too much trouble. It makes him an incredibly dangerous and lethal opponent in hand-to-hand and very close range combat, but he's not very good with most weapons. Oh he can hold them right, he can swing them and hit stuff, but there's always guaranteed to be someone better around. Peeta fights with a pair of Celestial bronze knuckles and a Celestial bronze knife, relying on his also pretty decent speed (and armor) to keep him in one piece while he beats down his opponents. He is currently the camp wrestling champion.

Personality: Peeta Mellark is one of those guys that most people are just happy to know. Friendly, level-headed, considerate, generous, he's not consciously aware of the fact that he's a "good guy," but yeah, that's pretty much his lot in life. He makes friends easily and quickly, even if someone isn't from the "good" set of people to be friends with, and he treats everyone he meets (that isn't trying to hurt someone) well. Even his rivals don't really have much bad to say about him, other than the fact that he is a rival, and obviously that means they're on the opposite sides of something (usually bullying). He can and has risked getting hurt to help someone in need, going against what other people tell him or want him to do even if he later has to pay for it. He finds it unconscionably difficult to let things alone when he sees something going wrong, so he tries to help and fix things, even if his help is more quiet and not as flashy as some other people's.

That said, for the most part Peeta is content to live in the background - or, well, not content, per se, but he finds it difficult to put himself forward except in extreme circumstances. With two older brothers that are more outgoing and forceful in their personalities than he is, he's become used to taking the back seat from a very young age and tends to just more follow the path laid before him than try to forge a new one. If he has a major failing it's that, that he finds it hard to force himself out of his comfortable boundaries without exceptional circumstances forcing him. He acknowledges that, like almost anyone, extreme circumstances can lead him to do things he'd consider unfathomable in everyday life, but those extreme circumstances have to drag him kicking and screaming through his door for it to happen.

Even with that, though, Peeta has an amazing sense of self that's very grounding for a lot of people around him. He knows who he is, he knows what he can do, he knows his limits and his strengths, and the one thing he will fight for more than anything is the preservation of that self from outside forces. It doesn't matter what comes after him, he is not changing himself to be or reflect what other people want him to be, even if he is fully capable of subsuming it at times in order to fool other people into thinking he has. At the same time, though, he has a serious problem in understanding himself and his importance. And yeah, maybe at the end of the day it makes very little effect to the world in general if he's there or not, but he has enough of a self-confidence issue to put almost everyone else before himself and not think of that as anything close to a bad thing. It's an odd dichotomy, since he is so certain of what he is and what he isn't, but he's certainly more ready to believe the worst about himself than other people and what he considers being "realistic" most others would consider being stupid. Maybe the world wouldn't miss him if it lost him, but plenty of people would.

What most people don't suspect about him is just how calculating and manipulative he can be. He has a gift with words and, when the chips are down, a drive to protect that which he cares about which means he can and will lie like a rug - convincingly - to protect something or someone. His gift for connecting with people and making them believe what he's telling them is far greater than anyone really understands, up to and sometimes including Peeta himself because he doesn't quite comprehend the effect he can have on people. He is fully capable of making grand speeches from the heart, swaying large crowds to his side with the cadence and choice of his words. This is an ability he can put to use on a small scale often in everyday life, part of which makes him so effective at helping people, but he still hasn't quite seen how it can affect large groups although he's willing to risk trying it if the need arises. He doesn't like being in situations where he'd have to use it on that scale, but with the way his life has gone, practice for it is never a bad thing.

AU History: Peeta's story really begins before he was born, with his father, Tyler Mellark. He owned a specialty artisan bakery in eastern Kentucky that had been in his family for a couple of generations, was happily married, and the father of two young boys with his wife. Basically life was perfect; the bakery was a local institution, and the Mellark family grew a pretty good number of their ingredients for use in the business (except the wheat) in a large garden outside their house, ranging from herbs to tomatoes to cucumbers to edible flowers to all sorts of things. His marriage was happy and stable, his children were healthy, and business looked to be growing well.

Then, barely a year after his second son was born, his wife was killed in a car wreck and Tyler was suddenly left with two children to raise alone and a business to run that took at least two full-time people and assorted help. He was lost, floudering, some days barely remembering to clothe the children with everything he had to remember. But one day a strange woman came to town, and to the bakery. She introduced herself as Debby, said she was fleeing from an abusive relationship, and asked for work - and Tyler was desperate enough for some help with the bakery that he accepted her immediately after he saw just how well she cooked. Debby quickly took over the bakery and the gardening, improving recipes and introducing new ones, and slowly Tyler came out of his panic to get to know this new employee. More than get to know, eventually; whether he saw his dead wife in her or just herself, Tyler eventually fell in love with her, and she moved into the Mellark house. When his second son was three, Debby told him she was pregnant, and he immediately proposed; she accepted, but kept finding a reason to delay the wedding. Something was coming up with the business, or one of the children was sick, and Tyler wasn't worried about anything happening because she'd said yes. Things happened, plans changed. So his third child - Peeta - was born with a few whispers because his parents still weren't married in their fairly conservative town, but he was a happy and healthy child that seemed to love nothing more than spending time in the kitchen. Then, with no warning, when Peeta was two months old, Debby vanished.

Tyler was destroyed a second time, and this time it was worse. He spiraled into depression at the loss of two women he loved within three years, one with seemingly no explanation whatsoever. He didn't even know whether she was alive or dead, and the police couldn't find anything of her when he reported her as missing. He was forced to reveal that he knew very little about her in reality, not where she was from or about her parents or anything. Since she hadn't stolen anything, and in fact left the bakery in better shape than it had been in before she'd come, she obviously wasn't a tramp. But Tyler never learned what happened to her, never learned why she'd abandoned him. He grew detached from his sons, especially Peeta, and only really came alive when he was working.

Peeta grew up always knowing something was... wrong with his father, but not sure what. He took to hanging around in the kitchen of the house, trying to cook things, so he could be with his father and maybe earn his approval. And it became obvious very quickly that Peeta had inherited his mother's and his father's talent in the kitchen, and out of all of his sons Tyler became closest, in a way, to Peeta through their shared cooking. His older brothers were somewhat jealous of Peeta, never maliciously, but they were never as close as they could have been. Partially they blamed his mother for the condition their father was in, and they transferred part of that blame to Peeta, unfair as that was.

But even with all of that, Peeta's childhood was pretty normal. His town was backwoods enough that monsters didn't really come there, and since he never had any sort of inkling that his mother was really Demeter the few that did get close enough may have been suspicious but never attacked. He was a pretty popular kid at school because he was just nice, and because he brought everyone cookies a lot of days. A couple of kids picked on him, but they picked on everyone, and they quickly learned not to do it in front of Peeta as he was fully capable from a young age of slamming them into the concrete. His biggest problems came from the fact that things just seemed to... happen to him, with him getting into accidents that no one could have predicted. They discovered he was horribly allergic to wasps, for example, when he had to be rushed to the hospital after tripping over a nest while playing in the woods. Or the time he somehow got wrapped in vines and had to be cut free, although it turned out that if he'd kept walking he would've fallen into a small sinkhole so overall that could've been worse. He also started showing true artistic talent, as well as a skill for public speaking, that earned him some teasing but was pretty much viewed as a good thing.

When he was twelve, a kid named Reed moved to town, and Peeta took pity on him because he had bad legs and started bringing him sandwiches. They became sort of tentative friends, as Peeta already had his own group and some of them didn't want to be seen with "the cripple," but Peeta couldn't just ignore him, especially since he never complained. They slowly got to know each other, at least on a surface level, but Reed was the one who would change his world forever because about six months later, Reed would corner him and reveal who he really was - a satyr, goat legs and all, who was searching for demigods. And he'd found one in Peeta. Peeta, of course, thought he was crazy, but Reed wouldn't drop it and followed him home. That turned out to be both the best thing and worst thing that could have happened, because now that he knew about demigods (even if he didn't quite believe it), his "smell" increased and there just so happened to be a small flock of Stymphalian Birds passing by. Detecting a new demigod, they attacked as Peeta and Reed were crossing the garden. Reed tried to defend him by playing his pipes, but it was Peeta's abilities with plants that awoke with a vengeance and saved them both. Vines and thorns erupted from the ground, lassoing the birds and snaring them, tethering them to the earth and squeezing the life out of them as Peeta prayed for the nightmare to be over. After it was done, Reed discovered Peeta had passed out, and dragged him indoors.

When Peeta was awake again, his father was home, and Reed repeated his whole lecture. Tyler was just as disbelieving of it all as Peeta was, but after the bird attack Peeta was sitting shaking on the couch and couldn't discount it. And Reed's story did explain a lot of things about his mother that no one had been able to answer, such as where she'd come from and where she'd gone... Reed managed to convince Tyler that he should at least give the idea a good think, mostly by creating an IM to Camp Half-Blood right there in the living room so he could speak to Chiron. So, that summer, Peeta flew up to New York with Reed to begin going to Camp Half-Blood.

He fit in there pretty much immediately. Granted, he'd never really felt the isolation of being an outcast because his personality had always made him friendly and approachable, but it was still nice to be around other children of the Greek gods. He shared a deeper connection with them than with a lot of the kids in his school, even if they didn't get along very well (not even he could be friends with everyone, though he came pretty close). It also became clear that some of the problems he'd had in school were due to him having primarily dyslexia (English had never been his best subject) but also ADHD. He was fully capable of focusing on something he wanted to focus on, but things he didn't consider important would just completely slip away from him, and he'd often sink farther into the focus than most people would. This would mostly show in his cooking/baking, gardening, and painting.

But Peeta's unfortunate luck still followed him to camp, and things... well, they kept happening. The most prominent was the time during his first summer when he fell out of his canoe and somehow managed to bash his head against it, knocking him out. He would have drowned in the lake if Finnick Odair hadn't grabbed him and dragged him to the bank to give him CPR, which he knew from all his surfing. The two became unlikely friends after that, with Finnick being the slightly weirder of the two who liked to pretend to flirt with Peeta while Peeta just rolled his eyes and got the truth out of him. Other misadventures included nearly losing three fingers to a sword, somehow managing to uproot a straight line of trees through the forest in a domino effect, and getting kidnapped by a giant scorpion during a game of Capture the Flag. Every time something happens Peeta manages to come out all right, maybe hurt, definitely bruised, but at least alive, which given the way demigod life goes is about the best he can do.

Peeta missed the summer session due to another unfortunate instance at the end of the school year with a wasp nest that landed him in the hospital for over a month. By the time the (mortal) doctors declared him ready to begin his full life again, there was very little time left to the summer, so he and his father agreed that going to Camp was kind of a waste of time. That's when the Red Room attacked, trying to get to Peeta - they knew who he was and where he lived thanks to their spies in the camp, of course, and they sent a small squad of monsters to try and capture him. Peeta managed to fight them off using his combat skills and the family garden (which was a mess after he was done), but it frightened his father so much that he refused to let his son return to camp after that, despite Peeta rightfully pointing out that the longer he stayed there, the more of a danger he was to his family. Peeta was used to combat, having been through the Battle of the Labyrinth and the Battle of Manhattan, but hadn't told his family the full truth of how dangerous being a demigod even inside Camp Half-Blood could be, and it was hitting his father and his older brothers for the first time. Stephen, his second-oldest brother and the one that still lived at home, joined his father in forbidding Peeta to return so they could try and keep him safe. Peeta didn't want to fracture his family so he reluctantly agreed, but took the first opportunity he could - another attack over Thanksgiving - to spin things around and persuade them to let him return. It took a few more days before they agreed, but they did at last, and Peeta finally returned to Camp Half-Blood, prepared to stay until the threat was over.

Counselor: Jehan all the way~

SAMPLES

Iris Message: Sorry it took so long to get back here, guys - some, uh, things came up that I couldn't control.

[One would never know that Peeta spent the better part of the summer in the hospital or got attacked over Thanksgiving by the slightly sheepish grin he gives the rainbow - he'd had a few chats with Jehan and Finnick while he was away so he's been kept generally up to date on what's happened, but he isn't about to go spilling his own story so soon after arrival. It's not that important in the grand scheme of things.]

Looks like things are getting kind of crazy around here, with all the different pantheons showing up now, but, it's Christmastime, so we should be able to relax and focus on good things for awhile. Things were getting kind of crazy at the bakery, but I did bring a huge tub of gingerbread, chocolate mint cookie, and hamentashen if anyone wants to drop by Cabin 4 for some later. [He gives an eyeroll here.] Don't worry Finnick, I brought your croissants, too; you don't have to go hounding me about that. Even though you're probably going to.

So yeah, it's good to be back, and welcome to all of the new guys I haven't met yet - and, uh, when you get a chance, let me know if you've got any food allergies. I need to update my list since we've got so many new people.

[So he doesn't accidentally kill anyone. With a smile and a brief wave, Peeta breaks the connection.]

Third Person Log: It felt good to be back at last - he'd last seen the place over a year ago, after all, when he'd left for the school year after the Battle of Manhattan. He hadn't meant it to be that long, of course, but even a demigod could fall prey to horrible allergies and that wasps' nest had come along at a pretty terrible time. Then compound it with the fact that one of his doctors had given him treatments that somehow negatively reacted with his demigod nature and... yeah, it had been too long. Although how that wasp nest had gotten out there where he could find it and have such a disturbingly large reaction to it was something he'd have to talk to Chiron about in the very near future. Given what Jehan had told him about the Red Room, he wouldn't have been at all surprised to find out that that may have been one of their traps.

But, he was back at camp, where he really belonged. To stay, at least until the danger was past. Peeta shut the door to Cabin 4, setting the heavy box containing his brand-new standing mixer (an early Christmas present/goodbye gift from his father) next to the door to take to the kitchen later, dragging his trunk over to the foot of his usual bed. There were things in the cabin that he didn't recognize and he could only assume they belonged to his new sister he'd been told about, and he made a mental note to track her down and introduce himself to her properly, but for the moment all he could do was sit on his bed and lean forward, putting his forehead in his hand and just trying not to think for the moment.

The fact that he wouldn't be going home for a very long time was still hitting him, even if he knew it was for the best and was, in fact, what he wanted. He missed camp, he missed being with his other family, but he'd still been born and raised in that little town in Kentucky. He'd spent most of his life living in that house with his father and Laurence and Stephen, and now he wouldn't be seeing them again except over IMs when they could arrange a good time to talk. Even if his brothers had been distant with him when he was a child, they were still his brothers, and Stephen had been injured in that attack - not too badly, it just needed stitches and it could've been a lot worse, but it had still been his fault for being there. It was why he needed to go away, but he couldn't help but worry about them, wonder if they'd be safe with him removed from the picture-

A knock at the door interrupted his worrying and he rose, trying to hide the signs of his thoughts before reaching it. He wasn't sure how successful he was but he opened the door anyway, so reveal a satyr lugging the stack of tupperware containers that held the results of his baking the day before. "You left these at the Big House, you know."

"Oh - yeah, sorry, I didn't have enough hands. Thanks, I can get it now." Accepting the pile of plastic and baked goods, Peeta gave a friendly nod to the satyr before shutting the door and dragging a small table to the center of the cabin. He'd done what he could to protect his family at home - now he needed to prepare to say hello to his family at camp.