"Look around you. Everyone in this room is a predator."

The law never stopped District 1 from training tributes up for the Hunger Games. District 1 has always been in this to win. Winning is everything for us. When a tribute from our District doesn't win, their family doesn't show their faces for days, for weeks, for months.

Not until someone else loses.

"You all have the classic characteristics of predators. Strength, size, front-facing eyes, intelligence."

Six years ago, my brother went into the Games. He was seventeen, reaped and too proud to let anyone take his place. I was eleven. When it came down to the final two, his District partner did him in before he could sum up the courage to lift a finger against her.

They say the fool fell in love.

"We have the advantage. Well-fed. Strong. Trained. We're smarter than them. Better."

After Tai was killed and Orchid came home, we strayed out of our home as little as possible. Mum didn't make me go to school. Dad went straight to work and came straight home. I stole out of the house the second the shops opened to buy us the things we'd need to keep holed up in our shame.

Look around you—

We gradually began to crawl out of our house more and more. The Victory Tour was agonizing. The girl who won, Orchid, did not let us forget for a second that she had bested Tai. It was obvious that she had never loved him. The next Games, the District 1 girl was killed in the bloodbath.

I haven't seen her family since.

"To lose is to be disgraced. To bring shame to the name of your father. To die."

The pressure was ridiculous when I got reaped. One child losing the Games was one thing. But a second? It would be an utter debacle for me to lose. When I heard the name "Lacey Fiepre" called, my mind began to race with what I had just been dragged into. I couldn't let the other girls volunteer for me. I had to prove that the Fiepre family was strong.

That was only until my father came to say goodbye and called me a "worthless bitch who sought only to further dirty his name."

"Competition is a part of life. Life in the arena holds competition higher than you've ever experienced. But you have the upper hand. You'll be ready."

I didn't blame Tai for losing. I was of the mind that he died a noble death. For a while during the games, I took to thinking my favorite quote over and over in my head while Tai was on the screen. If you don't go out there and die for something, then I will kill you for nothing. I didn't want my brother to be a murderer.

Not until he died.

Everyone in this room—

I put thought into my decision. I put time into it. The night before the Games began I knew what I was going to do. Too long I had spent being tugged by strings. The other Districts, they see District 1 as a haven. A place where no one has to lift a finger to do anything but train to win the Games. A place for the lap dogs of the Capitol to flourish.

That wasn't a life I wanted to live.

"You are the strongest. The fastest. The smartest. You're evolved. Your adaptations are magnificent. You are a miracle. A slaughtering, bloody miracle."

Killing people wasn't on my agenda. It is one thing to do something, but it is quite another to live with it. I didn't want to go mad. I didn't want to live if I had to live with it. A little smile played on my lips as I rose up into the arena. My father would wear his disgrace like a fat, ugly wig like the ones they wore in the Capitol. He'd stick out like a sore thumb in any crowd, the wig drawing any and all attention to him.

Just before the gong sounded, I launched myself from my plate.

—LOOK—

Not once did I regret jumping. Those Games were the bloodiest I had ever seen. A hulk of a girl from District 2 ended up winning. My District partner was out of the picture the second night. The victor was out of the arena before the fourth day was up. It was a fiasco. The Gamemakers wore their own disgraces along with my father.

The look on his face when I exploded all over the screen was priceless.

In the Hunger Games, there are predators and there is prey. Everyone in that arena has the physical traits of a predator. But some have a heart. They have weakness, some may say. They become the prey, the stepping stones on the way to the top. I would have been prey. I would have been cowering, too-weak-to-kill-others, easy-to-destroy prey.

My way was quicker.

Life in District 1 was always about leaping. They taught you that the winner was the one who reacted first, the one who acted on pure instinct and gut feeling. I preferred to look, to make sure I had a place to put my feet. I was never cut out to be a winner. A predator.

I was prey.

—PREDATOR—

AN: Written for the District 14 Monthly Prompt "wig" on Caesar's Palace.