Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.

A/N-I've made a timeline thingie of the stories and put it on my profile to help with any confusion about the sequence of events.

Only Make Believe

Madge is almost asleep, first hour is painfully early and feels way too long for a high school class.

Normally, she enjoys history. She and Peeta love 'Band of Brothers' and 'The Pacific' and she's watched so many documentaries over almost every period in human history that it's almost embarrassing. History class on the other hand…

Madge is pretty sure she's learned more historically accurate information in earth science than she has in almost two months of world history with Coach Cray.

She'd given him a chance, the first few weeks, and then he made them watch 'Pearl Harbor'. Not that she didn't appreciate seeing Josh Harnett, she did, but that was about the only thing she enjoyed about watching the multi-day waste of time. It almost physically pained her to watch it, and she nearly strangled Chesney everytime she replayed scenes.

She's jolted awake by someone flopping down in the front of her row, jarring her desk and knocking her pencil onto the floor with a little clatter. Not that the giant that caused the disturbance even noticed.

Gale Hawthorne, looking like he'd put the barest minimal into his morning routine, seemed blissfully unaware that he'd made himself a nuisance just by sitting, with all the grace of a drunken moose, in his regular seat.

Sighing, Madge leans down and grabs her pencil from the floor, shoots the animatedly jabbering boys a dark look, then sits back, slouching down and hoping to catch a nap before the next hour.

Just as she's drifting off again, gripping her writing utensil in her hand, Coach Cray comes into the room, looking annoyed and grumbling to himself, rubbing his blood shot eyes. He drops into his ancient chair behind his desk, it creaks loudly, and begins thumbing through one of several papers on his desk. Madge thinks they're probably notes on football practice, because lord knows having anything to do with the subject he supposedly teaches on his desk would be a high crime.

After a few minutes he stands, stretches, then barks out at the class, "Shut up." He squints out at them, seems utterly annoyed at having to be in their presence, which Madge can commiserate with, then cracks his neck, "Alright, I've been told that someone complained about the lack of supposed structure in this class." He huffs, as though the idea is ludicrous, "So you bunch of ingrates have earned yourselves a report."

The room lets out an almost synchronized groan.

While Madge thinks the class is a bit of a joke, she can live with it. She uses the hour to catch up on homework for other classes, watch Chesney fix her hair in elaborate curls, eat breakfast, or, most importantly, catch a nap before the long day. A report is going to majorly cut into her beauty sleep.

Racking her brain, Madge can think of only person who would ever complain about a lack of work in a class.

Delly Cartwright is definitely on Madge's shit list.

Chesney raises her hand, "Do we have to?"

Coach Cray sneers, "Yes, Shumard, you do."

He turns back to the whiteboard, begins scribbling in his cuneiform scrawl the requirements of the report. When he reaches the third point, which Madge is unable to decipher, he stops. For a second Madge wonders if he's finally blown an artery. Then a wicked smile forms on his face.

"I think you kids need some bonding time," he turns back to the class. "This report will be done in pairs."

##########################

Gale almost groans out loud when Coach Cray barks out, "Hawthorne and, uh…Undersee."

Of all the people to get saddled with for this joke of a report, it had to be her.

Why couldn't he have gotten Shumard? At least she didn't dress like she just walked out of a J. Crew ad. If he's going to be stuck working with someone it might as well be someone worth looking at.

Not that Undersee isn't pretty, he just thinks she'd be a lot prettier if she loosened up a little. She takes this high school crap way too seriously.

Knowing he isn't going to enjoy the next forty-five minutes, at least not today, Gale gets up and slowly makes his way to the back of the room where Undersee likes to lurk. He isn't sure why, Coach loves her, all the teachers do, but she seems to be trying to position herself as far from the teacher's eye line as possible.

Looking less than thrilled, Undersee stands, picks up her heavy looking backpack. Did she carry all her books with her?

"Did you get our subject?"

Gale holds up the slip of paper with Coach's illegible scribble on it.

She juts out her hand, perfectly manicured and undoubtedly soft, an expectant look on her face. Rolling his eyes, Gale plops it down, with more force than is really necessary, in her palm.

Her nose wrinkles up and she pushes a stray strand of hair out of her face. She seems to be thinking about the word on the paper, which Gale is clueless about, before nodding.

"Should we start with looking it up?" Because he's half certain Coach made it up.

Giving him a look that plainly says 'why would I do that?', Undersee shakes her head, "I know what it is."

Of course she would, she's just the type of girl to have all kinds of obscure knowledge tucked away in her blonde head. It's probably some stupid type of dress. Coach probably did it for a good laugh.

"Well," he raises his eyebrows, "care to fill me in?"

A little smile tugs at her lips and she waves the little paper, "A trebuchet."

Wow. She's unhelpful incarnate. Did she assume just because he was a football player he didn't know how to read? Granted he hadn't known how to say the stupid word, but her teaching him the correct pronunciation isn't exactly helping him with what the damn word means.

Seeming to sense she hasn't exactly told him what he wants to know, she frowns, "Don't you know what a trebuchet is?"

Yeah, of coursehe does, he's just enjoying the witty rapport they have going on.

Eyebrows arching incrementally higher, he huffs, letting her know that no he does not.

"Oh, uh," she actually looks a little flustered. "It's an ancient catapult, basically."

Now you have my attention.

Shifting her backpack on her shoulder, he considers telling her that carrying it with one strap is terrible for your back, but doesn't, she begins animatedly describing this supposed medieval siege weapon.

It sounds stupid simple to him, a catapult that uses a counterweight to create the momentum and a sling to throw the unwanted delivery. How had he not heard of this before? More importantly, why the hell did Undersee know anything about weaponry? Shouldn't she have been studying fashion or reading a brightly colored magazine with completely bullshit articles in it?

While he's contemplating Madge Undersee's apparently extensive knowledge of ancient battle technology, she's shifted her backpack again, pulled out a notebook.

"It probably won't do much good, but I might as well go to the library. Ms. Poteau's collection probably has a few books from back when trebuchets were cutting edge."

Gale snorts. That was almost funny. Boring, but…funny.

Undersee scoots past him and up to Coach's desk, "Can I go to the library?"

Coach doesn't even look at her, just waves his hand in dismissal.

She must not think Gale is coming, and he would rather not, but that seems unfair.

Before he can follow her out the door, grab his pencil and paper from his desk, Coach calls out and waves him to his desk.

He gives Gale a scrutinizing look, "You don't have to go with her, you know?" Coach shifts in his chair and it lets out a high squeak, "Undersee's an academic overachiever. She'll have this report wrapped up by the end of the week. You just have to stand there."

Judging by the look Coach gives him, he must think he's given Gale a real treat. An easy 'A'.

It rubs Gale the wrong way though. He doesn't like the idea of her doing all the work. It isn't really in his nature to pass assignments off on someone else, even if he's certain she'd be perfectly happy to carry on without him. It also irks him that Coach would think Gale wouldn't, or possibly couldn't, do his own work. He isn't stupid or lazy, he just thinks most things in school are tedious.

Forcing a smile, Gale gives Coach a nod, "Thanks, I think I'll go to the library anyway."

Coach's smile widens, a little knowingly, though what for Gale isn't sure, before again waving his hand and letting Gale leave.

Gale's been in the library exactly twice. Once to pick a book for his freshmen English report the year before and once to return the stupid thing. The librarian is wicked, looks down on the students, they're a nuisance she has to put up with in exchange for getting to cocoon herself with her precious books, and he'd rather not deal with her.

When he walks into the library he instantly sneezes, the stupid books are heavy with dust, alerting the batty old woman he's there.

She juts a finger at him, "No drinks by the books, young man."

With a huff, Gale walks back out and drops his almost entirely full sport drink in the trash.

Slinking past her, he squints around the dimly lit room, searching for Undersee. She can't have gotten far and the room isn't that big, but she's small, it may take some time to find her.

He begins at the edge and works his way back, peaking through the rows of books. Finally, at the backmost shelve, he finally finds her, squinting down at a book that looks like it actually might've been around during a medieval battle.

She must not hear him come up, because she makes a funny little noise, a kind of squeak, when he leans over her back to read what she's so intently focused on.

"Please don't read over my back," she tells him, folding in on herself a little.

Shrugging, some people are just weird like that, he takes the book from her hand, "What'd you find?"

Her mouth tilts down, "Nothing I didn't already know." She tucks that loose strand back behind her ear again, "Since the written section only has to be four pages, though, I really don't need much. It's the citation section that's going to be a pain."

While Gale is still trying to process her saying 'only has to be four pages', emphasis ononly, she's still carrying on.

"We can go to the public library after school. Unlike our penny pinching school, they actually have computers, so we can get resources there too…"

Gale hands her the book back, "I have football practice after school."

She looks a little annoyed for a moment, her lip puckers and her eyebrows scrunch together. A second later she sighs, "Yeah, figured."

That little flare of annoyance flickers in his chest again. He has to go to practice. Football is his ticket out of this dead end town. His grades aren't bad, they could be better, but even if they were, that isn't what's going to pay his way in life. Just because she's got family money to burn doesn't mean they all have.

Still, he isn't going to put all the work on her, he isn't a slacker and he won't give her reason to say he is. And she seemed to want, maybe even expect him to help her with it, which is a little refreshing. He'd expected her to think along Coach's line, that Gale could ride her pretty little skirt tail to an 'A'.

"I'll come after."

Undersee shakes her head, bites her lip, "No, that's too late."

"I'll be the one hurting for it." He's the one that has to drive home out in the Seam, he'll be the one wasting precious sleep time working on this stupid project, he'll be the one with a cold dinner…

"Yeah, but the library closes before your practice ends."

Oh. He hadn't really thought about that.

She shifts her backpack again, scrunches up her nose, "Well, like I said, I won't need much. I can do the research at home if you can't make it to the library. Maybe this weekend we can meet up and figure out what we need to do for the project part?"

Gale would rather spend his weekend fishing or hunting with his dad, Katniss, and her dad, but if meeting Undersee this Saturday meant he didn't have to see her the next then he's all for it. The quicker this stupid assignment ends the better as far as he's concerned.

"Fine by me."

###################################

The next day when Gale flops down into the seat in front of Madge, once again knocking her pencil to the floor, she bites her lips and tries not to snap at him. She just has to get through this stupid assignment then she can go back to napping through Coach Cray's pointless class.

"You, uh, find some stuff?"

Chewing her tongue, Madge pulls her red history folder from her backpack and opens it on the desk, revealing the perfectly typed rough draft of she and Gale's paper. She spins it around so he can see it.

For a second he just stares at it, like he's never seen a report before, then he scowls.

"You wrote it already?"

Madge just arches her eyebrows. Of course she had. It was only four pages, twelve font and double spaced, a bare bones report with all the requirements Coach Cray had lined out: main time period the weapon was used, its basic function, and whether it was still relevant today. Not exactly a challenge.

Gale looks a little more than offended though.

"I could've helped, you know?" He practically growls.

Ugh. Boys and their stupid pride.

"The research was practically done with one search and typing isn't exactly a two man job." It hadn't even taken an hour to wrap this joke up. What is his problem? She'd just saved them hours of wasted time they could be using on the main part of the report, the project.

Madge has been partnered with freeloaders before, and she isn't going to let Gale's lack of initiative tank her GPA.

He seems to have a little battle with himself, must be realizing she's moved them one step closer to not having to deal with one another again, weighing his feelings against the prospect of freedom from her. Freedom must win, because he scowls, lets out a little huff, then nods.

"Fine, but you have ask me before you get all report happy again." He glares at her, "I canhelp."

Fixing her face in its most neutral expression, Madge nods, "Gale, we have two weeks to get this report done, and I've just wrapped up half of it." The mind numbing half.She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks as he stares at her. "It isn't that I didn't think you could do it, but I figured if we got the boring part out of the way we could move on to the fun stuff."

His eyebrows slowly arch up and his mouth flattens into a thin line. Clearly he doesn't see any fun in the foreseeable future, at least not as far as this report is concerned.

Hoping to appeal to the destructive side of him, Mr. Abernathy assures her all boys have one, Madge pulls out the sloppy sketch she'd made the night before as she'd skimmed the internet for legitimate resources for their report.

It's not very good, she's definitely no artist, but it gets the point across. She's diagramed it to the best of her abilities, written out to the side what they'll need for the construction…

"Let's face it, Coach doesn't care much about the written portion," she smiles fondly down at her drawing. "So…we're going to build a trebuchet."

############################

Gale fails to see how building a trebuchet is going to be 'fun', especially with Undersee bossing him around.

He understands her reasoning, get the part she feels is easiest out of the way so they can focus on the part that Coach will undoubtedly care about, grade them on. It still annoys him though, that she's carrying on with the project like she's the only one doing anything in their two man group.

When she pulls out the diagram, not as polished as he expects from her, and looks so excited, though, he can't help but feel a little grateful for her eagerness to get going with things. Gale's never exactly enjoyed getting started with school projects or finishing them for that matter, but Undersee's determination infects him just a little. They're ahead of schedule, ahead of probably all the class, and it's only the second day.

It isn't until he squints at her neat, delicate handwriting along the margin that his enthusiasm wavers.

"All this crap is going to cost a lot." As much fun as it would be to make a full sized, well at least a fairly large, French catapult thing, he doesn't have the money to throw into a stupid school project. The lumbar alone just isn't in his price range.

She doesn't even look thrown by his tone, which is nothing short of terse.

"We're going to get it cheap, trust me."

Gale has the feeling she's either going to say her parents are going pony up the money or that they're going to rob a bank, and he's more inclined to commit the robbery than ask Undersee's parents for anything. Instead of either of those options, though, she just smiles.

"I know a place."

Assuming it'll be worth it to miss a meal and watch whatever grand little plan she has fall apart, she's far too sure of herself and it's starting to annoy him, Gale offers to drive her to her supposed 'place' during lunch.

They drive all the way to the edge of the city just North of town, a good ten minute drive, to what looks like some kind of yard sell from hell. It appears to be an old warehouse, but there are kitchen appliances and sofas, toilets and bathtubs, mismatched cabinets, doors, and window in semi-neat rows in the parking lot. Undersee's takes out a tape measure and begins walking purposefully, navigating past the ancient pink and blue toilets and a sink that look like the inside of a seashell, to the back of the lot, around the side of the building, to where assorted lumber is stacked.

It's marked cheap, someone has taken a marker and scribbled numbers on them. It doesn't look like the greatest lumber Gale's ever seen, but it's far from the worst. Undersee begins digging through them, crawling over them a little clumsily, attempting to find pieces to her liking. Each time she finds a candidate she measures it, then either grins or makes a small pout before pushing it to her right or left. Her skirt wraps around her legs, begins working its way up her thighs and she stops several times to push it back down, to Gale's slight disappointment.

"I think these will do," she points to the several on her right when Gale finally walks over to her. "You might want to check them thought. You're probably better with wood than I am."

He can't stop himself, he glares, "Why do you think that?"

Was it because he's poor? She thinks all people like him have some intrinsic knowledge of manual labor?

She straightens up, "Aren't you in woodwork?" Her nose wrinkles up again, "I thought you said you made your mother a table during class the other day…"

Feeling a little foolish for being so defensive, Gale nods. He had said that. Not to her though. "You eaves dropping, Undersee?"

That wayward strand of hair that seems to keep finding its way into her face gets pushed aside again as she rolls her eyes, "What else am I supposed to do during history?" She sighs, "You aren't exactly the quietest person, you know? The entire class got to hear about it right before you told Sal Sanderson about you and some girl up at the Slag Heap."

A flush of heat rises on his face, he's certain he looks like he's tanned an entire summer just standing in the autumn sun. Undersee climbs down from between the wood, just barely manages not to trip when her foot gets caught under one of the boards.

"You measure and make sure they'll work and I'm going to go get the screws and nails."

Annoyed at being bossed around, but pleasantly surprised at the prices marked on the wood, Gale quickly measures them before heading in the direction Undersee had disappeared in.

He finds her sifting carefully through a box of mismatched screws and nails, some bent and some so perfect they might've just come from a brand new box. She's started a little pile by her leg, where she's cross-legged on the cold concrete ground.

"They're having a special today. Fill up a bag for a dollar."

Flopping down beside her, Gale picks up one of the rusty nail, "What is this place?"

Madge doesn't look up, keeps looking through her find, "A restore store." At his confused look she continues, "They sell donated supplies and furniture and use the money to help build homes for families in need in the community." she squints at a nail, "I learned about it when my dad had me help at a build a few years back."

So for a good ten minutes Gale sits with her, digging in what he thinks is probably a tetanus salad, finding respectable and useable pieces. Once they have enough Undersee stands and dusts herself off, holds the bag up with a smile, "There's a dollar."

Before Gale knows what she's doing she's up at the counter, bartering over the prices of the already cheap supplies, it takes less than five minutes and Undersee has the elderly lady at the desk laughing, wheezing and coughing, speaking in an almost unintelligible gibberish. The old woman reaches out and pats Undersee on the shoulder with a warm smile.

"She says she'll give it to us all for half-price," Undersee finally tells Gale as she digs through her purse, pulling out a coin purse. "She has a soft spot for kids."

"I'll pay half," Gale quickly tells her. He doesn't know what half is going to be, not much judging by the prices on the wood, but he's going to pay his part.

Undersee holds up her hand, "You drove here and you're driving back, with all our supplies. I'll pay for the supplies and not pay you for gas, okay?"

Did she read minds or just spend all her time thinking of all the possible ways Gale could get upset with her? It's really annoying, whatever it is.

He doesn't want to say 'okay', he should pay half, but his gas is probably going to cost more than the wood, nails, and screws, and somehow that soothes him. He nods, "Fine."

##########################

Madge has Gale ask the elderly woodshop teacher if they can use the drills, saws, and whatever other tools they'll need for their project during lunch.

"We can get the entire project done without any after school work or weekends if we just skip lunch the next few weeks."

It isn't a hardship on Madge really, Peeta is the only person she really eats with and he's got plenty of people he can go with if she isn't around. Gale on the other hand seems a little put out.

"But it's my lunch…"

His tune changes, though, when the trebuchet quickly starts taking form.

"This is going to be so awesome," he chuckles as he and Madge hoist the arm into place.

She holds it and he shoves a spare bit of pipe, thrown in with rope and the canvas for the sling by old Mags at her resale store, through the axis. When he gets it secured they both step back and admire their handiwork.

It's not pretty, not really, but considering neither one of them has any engineering experience, they think it looks good for their skill level.

"Once you bring the those sandbags and we put them in the counterweight we can take it out in the field behind the Ag parking lot and test it out," Gale tinkers with the arm, raising it up and down, making the weighted end swing gently. "I read those papers you gave me yesterday, and we'll need to fire it off a few times to test the accuracy and the distance."

Madge is fairly confident it'll work. She and Gale had watched dozens of videos of people shooting off trebuchets, to study them, and see how different ones looked. They watched almost too many a couple of times. Madge had been late to English twice, and despite saying that she was learning about the defenses of Minas Tirith, Ms. Trinket didn't care. Which was completely unfair. Madge was combining her classes, crossing her studies, real history and the history of Middle Earth…

"She was a fruit cake last year too," Gale says almost consolingly.

During their lunch sessions Madge lets herself appreciate just how very good looking Gale is. He likes to take off his shirt, despite that it's not even remotely warm, while he works on their project. Chesney would probably drop dead at the sight, and Madge can't say she blames her.

Pressley, who'd ended up with Delly during her hour, a combination that's painful to even hearabout, just sighs everytime Madge mentions her lunchtime activities during fourth hour.

"How did you get so lucky."

While Madge wouldn't exactly call it lucky, getting stuck with Gale Hawthorne is certainly less of a disaster than she thought it would be. Once they got past his lack of organization or as he called it, Madge's obsessive scheduling, things went surprisingly smoothly. They hadn't even argued since the first day.

As their time winds down, Madge finds herself actually dreading the end of the project.

########################

Despite himself, Gale enjoys his lunches with Madge.

He'd groaned out loud, hadn't wanted to spend two weeks' worth of lunches with her, but they'd ended up being…not terrible.

In fact, he was going to miss them when it was over.

The Wednesday before the project is due they very carefully load their weapon, which is unsurprisingly heavy, into the back of Gale's truck, unload it, and set it up in the field.

"Do you get the feeling it's just going to shatter the first time we set it off?" She asks, her lip puckering out slightly, a little enticingly.

She's grown on him, these past two weeks. He'd thought she was a little stuck up, but having to hang out with her during lunch had opened her up. Now he would probably call her a little shy, but with a sharp side to her outwardly sweet nature.

"Ms. Trinket made the grave mistake of making the word 'ossify' her 'Word of the Day' for today," she'd snorted one day before heading to class. "Any bets on whether she picks up on any of the double entendres I've stealthily hidden in my daily prompt?"

Madge Undersee napped during her first hour, which she thought was a waste of time, and had no problem doing her homework from the night before while Coach was 'teaching', but she also loved learning, gaining new knowledge. Madge is almost painfully sweet, she took the time to help a desperate Chesney Shumard, one of the most obnoxious girls Gale has ever met, plot out what she and Sal Sanderson, one of the dimmest boys Gale has ever met, were going to do for their project.

"They got 'hellburners'," she told him the day he'd caught her helping a tearful Chesney during what was supposed to be her English hour. Ms. Trinket had apparently not known what to do with the visibly upset freshman and had let Madge take her to an empty class to calm her down.

"After I looked it up, helped her make an outline, helped her come up with a project, she was better."

"You did all that in an hour?" Gale'd asked her. It shouldn't have surprised him, Madge had a knack for not wasting time.

"I don't like having work hanging over my head. It makes me anxious. Plus, history is fun. I learned all about fire ships with Chesney."

That was another thing he'd learned about Madge, she's an enormous nerd. Not only does she make movie and book reference, but she also has the most bizarre bits of knowledge, more than he'd even expected, locked away in her pretty head. He's almost certain spending lunch with her has taught him more history and literary references than he'd absorbed during his entire freshman year.

She bites her lip and he realizes she's still waiting for an answer.

"Naw," he says quickly, crouching on the dry grass to ready the projectile, a heavily burnt round loaf Madge had supplied.

When he gets the release set he grabs Madge and pulls her with him to a safe distance. He's fairlyconfident nothing will go wrong, but as Madge had said only days before, the guys that made the Titanic were probably confident nothing could go wrong either.

Thus their desire to test it.

Giving the cord a tug, it releases.

A little less gracefully than the videos they'd watched, the bread is flung, arches high into the air, across the sky, landing somewhere out in the trees.

Gale is so thrilled with the success that he almost doesn't notice the pair of cool hands gripping his forearm.

Madge's eyes are squinted shut, her nose is scrunched up, her expression almost pained, as her soft, perfectly filed fingertips squeeze his arm.

"Did you not watch?"

She shakes her head, "No." One of her eyes peaks open, "Did it break?"

Gale can't help it, he starts laughing. She'd put so much effort into planning, gathering, helping build the stupid thing, and she hadn't even watched it's maiden launch.

Both her eye fly open, terrified at what she's going to find.

"It's…all in one piece." Her mouth creeps up into a bright smile, "It didn't break!"

Even though she dresses a little more expensively than the other girls at the school, isn't quite what he's use to, watching her bounce up and down on the balls of her feet and do a funny little dance at the success of their project, he wonders if maybe he doesn't like what she is more than what he's had anyway. She isn't pretty like the girls he's dated before, she's smart and funny and actually able to carry on a conversation, and that makes her beautiful. Which makes having to go back to the way things were that much harder.

############################

Coach Cray loves the trebuchet.

"If I could give you higher than 100% I would."

A silly as the retaliatory report had been, as childish as Madge felt the assigning people to each other seemingly out of spite was, she hadn't been as miserable as she'd expected. Gale had been…pleasant, though she knows that will be coming to as abrupt an end as it had started.

Which is a little disappointing, he could be so much more than just a football player, even though he seems to be convinced that particular path is the only one available to him.

Once the reports and projects are presented, Madge and Gale get to fling an untold number of things into the horizon, simply for Coach Cray's amusement, to be lost in the tree line beyond the field behind the school, things go back to normal.

Madge gets her first hour nap or homework rush-a-thon back, lunch with Peeta, breakfast, and beauty school with Chesney back. Gale gets to go back to rough housing with his friends and his date night recaps, though Madge notices they aren't quite as frequent, not quite as loud as they had been.

Part of her is grateful for that. For some reason the thought of hearing about his exploits turns her stomach.

After a few weeks things settle back to normal, and one too bright, too early morning, as she's drifting into a doze, Madge wonders if maybe Delly will complain again and get another report assigned.

Hopefully Coach Cray lets them keep their partners.