AN:

We've all read a good Dadvid fic or two, but I didn't find too many of those centered on Gwen. So in the interest of balance and to indulge myself more than anything else, here's a… Momwen? I guess?

"Well this was a moderately unbearable day..." Gwen thought as she was making her way towards the tent grounds. "Such a small group of brats getting into so much trouble is a fucking miracle."

She continued her stroll towards the campers' tents in the twilight of the late evening, the day's events rewinding in her mind.

"Putting out fires, confiscating switchblades, wrangling Australian mammals... All on a Sunday too. You'd think by now you would've known that no scheduled activities actually means more accidents, Gwen." she berated herself before taking a deep breath.

"Positive reinforcement, Gwen, don't focus on the negative." she reminded herself. "Your anxiety doesn't need any help." the tall counselor thought as she stood in the middle of the tent field.

"Find something positive about this shitty evening... Your sore muscles aren't burning as much, now that it's starting to get fucking cold. The reek of animal shit is being covered by the smell of pine trees that you'll have nightmares about for the rest of your life. You won't be hearing David's nagging before bed, seeing how fending off the little freaks turned into a private torture session today... Positive thoughts!" Gwen reiterated with a twitch in her eye.

She took another deep breath.

"Let's get this day over with." she thought, starting to go past the tents one by one, checking for lights and noises.

"Space kid tried drowning himself with a 'splashdown' in the lake again." she recalled, passing one tent.

"Ered won't stop trying to break her neck with makeshift bungee ropes." she passed another.

"If Harrison burns his tent down again, I swear to God!" she double checked the magician's sleeping quarters for any light sources.

"I had to drive Niel to the doctor again. I swear that kid's allergic to everything. And David just had to stay with him, leaving me alone in this hellhole..." she reached the end of the row of tents, passing the last of the campers' dwellings.

"Well, time for some well-deserved Netflix and Irish coffee." Gwen was trying to push the negativity out when something got her attention.

Among the ever annoying shrill of the crickets she managed to hear something coming from the last tent.

"Too fucking good to be true, wasn't it..." she thought as she turned towards Niel and Max's tent. "Missing one lackey and the little turd is still trying to make my life miserable."

Gwen approached the front of the tent in the evening's gloaming. The moon was full tonight and she had gotten her night eyes doing her rounds in the dusk.

"What are you up to this time?" she mused as she listened in through the tent flap. But instead of the sounds of smuggled electronic devices or wild animals, there was something else.

"Is that... crying?" Gwen couldn't believe what she was hearing.

She stood there for a good minute, listening to the quiet sobs of what could only be Max.

"He couldn't be hurt, I sent him to his tent right after dinner for trying to start a revolt against the 'fascist regime' I was running." she thought. "And I checked everyone for rashes after Niel broke out in hives, in case they touched whatever he did. They were all clean. Unless it's something contagious, that'll really make my day."

Gwen was standing at the tent entrance, hand raised towards it in hesitation.

"Max doesn't cry." she tried making sense of this. "He's not capable of any emotion other than hate. I bet the little shit is trying to mess with me." she thought, but another hiccup from the sobbing child inside the tent made her pause. The prospect of finally getting to the counselors' cabin and putting her feet up was tempting but some smidgeon of compassion towards the kid made her reconsider.

Gwen reached for the tent cover and quietly lifted it, letting the dim light of the moon inside. She saw the two cots, Niel's empty seeing as he was staying the night in the clinic.

On the other bed Max's wild hair was sticking out from under the blanket he had pulled over his head and the whole bundle was lightly shaking with each sob. The boy hadn't noticed the light streaming through the entrance with his head buried in his pillow and Gwen just stood there in disbelief.

To her surprise the realization that max wasn't bullshitting her somehow managed to tug at her heart.

"What can make this little pile of bile and morbid sarcasm bawl like that? Nothing going on around here ever made him give a fuck." she caught herself thinking.

"Guess I should see how the kid is... I'm not getting fired over another traumatized camper." she thought of an excuse and got her flashlight out.

"Max?" she quietly called as she turned her torch on.

The boy got startled and jumped up on his cot.

"What the fuck!" he exclaimed as he struggled with his blanket. "Have you heard of fucking privacy?" he was quick to wipe his eyes before he turned to sit on his bed facing Gwen.

Despite his efforts Max was a mess, shaggy, red-eyed and sniffling. He had been at this awhile.

"Max, are you... crying?" Gwen asked in a tone unusually soft for her. It was weird seeing Max like this. In her mind he always looked either angry or bored. Not... vulnerable.

"I'm not crying! You're shining your stupid flashlight in my eyes."

Gwen raised an eyebrow and shifted her light to the tear-stained pillow lying next to the boy. He was quick to turn the pillow over, trying to hide the obvious, only to reveal it was wet on the other side as well.

"What do you want?" he asked with irritation, turning his blood shot eyes back to Gwen. Trying to be his usual harsh self was hardly working with tears running down his face.

"Are you, uh... doing OK, Max?" she felt weird asking. She wasn't used to showing much concern for any camper, let alone this particular one. That was usually David's job. "Maybe I'm going soft." she thought.

"None of your fucking business." Max barked in a voice still raspy from crying.

"Just tell me what's wrong. I want to, uh... help you." the words felt strange coming out of her mouth.

"I don't have to tell you anything!" Max wrapped his blanket around himself at the chill wind entering through the flap Gwen was holding up.

"Max, look I'm all for ignoring problems..." she ducked in order to get inside and shut the entrance. "But you're obviously messed up… More messed up. Just tell me what happened."

"I told you, it's nothing! So leave me alone!" the kid tried denying it again.

"Max… You're still wiping your tears." Gwen pointed out.

"Shit..." he whispered and withdrew his hand from his face. "It's the stupid flashlight..." he said, trying to contain a sob and looking away.

Gwen got next to the boy's cot, left her flashlight on the small stand next to it and extended an open hand in a show of non-aggression.

"Are you hurt? Let me take a look at you." she asked, just in case she was wrong earlier. "It's OK to ask for help if you're..."

"I'm fine! I don't need you to baby me, Gwen!" he interrupted.

"Well then you're dealing with some emotional issue and sharing it is conductive to resolving it."

"So what, you came here to practice your psychology shit? I refuse to be a crutch to the frustration you have for your useless education!" Max crossed his arms frowning.

Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose. She took a moment to remember why she was here in the dark, after a long work day, trying to talk to the king of obnoxious instead of being in her bed, drink in hand, watching Hillbilly Wedding Wars.

"This brat is obviously not OK, he's in stage one and I haven't gotten so numb yet as to not try and help a crying kid." Gwen reminded herself. "Even if it is Max."

She opened her eyes again to the sight of a boy sitting on his bed, arms crossed, blanket wrapped around his shoulders and tear stains on his face. Seeing how hurt he looked despite trying to seem angry reminded Gwen that he really was just a kid after all. A kid needing help.

"Look, Max, I'm not here to make myself feel superior, because I need new ways to waste my time or because I've had too much sleep this past week." she began, a bit of ire in her voice. "I'm not blind." she said in a softer tone. "You're hurting and it's not the quartermaster's cooking this time. You were crying yourself to sleep for fuck's sake." she finished saying, almost to herself.

Max gritted his teeth, closing his eyes.

"So fucking what? Everyone cries themselves to sleep! We're all fucked up, we're all alone and then we all die!" the boy clutched his blanket hard, new tears welling in his eyes.

"Well here's stage two I guess. Talk about nihilism at an early age..." Gwen thought listening to the outburst.

"Come on, Max. We're all messed up in the head, but it doesn't keep us up at night unless it's something real fucked up." she tried being diplomatic. "Just tell me what's wrong and you might actually feel a bit less like shit."

Max didn't answer right away, sniffling as he considered the offer.

"And you're not going to use this to humiliate me?" he asked, throwing one end of the blanket over a raggedy brown pile of fabric that lay next to him on his cot.

"Here's bargaining, I guess..." Gwen thought.

"No, Max, I'm not." she tried sounding reassuring.

"And you're not just trying to get a good laugh out of me, because you have nothing better to do with your miserable life?"

"No, Max. I'm not." she started getting annoyed.

"And you're not doing this because it's the only way you'll feel any sort of accomplishment about your many useless degrees?"

"No. Max. I'm not." Gwen repeated through her gritted teeth.

The boy fell silent for a moment again.

"You wouldn't understand anyway." he finally said with an impudent tone.

"Oh yeah?" Gwen asked irritated, words coming out on their own. "How about I make a wild guess then. You're alone and scared. You have no one to turn to. So you're sitting all by yourself in your tent crying, not knowing if you're tired, angry or sad." she snapped.

That must have hit close to home, because new streams of tears flowed from Max's eyes and he angrily reached to wipe them.

"Gwen, you bitch, you let the kid's words get to you!" she chastised herself. "You ought to have gotten used to it by now."

"Max, I didn't..." she reached out to try and put a hand on the boy's shoulder but Max flinched and backed away. Gwen pulled her hand back and Max just slumped on his cot again.

"Back to square fucking one." Gwen thought. "Way to work your way to the problem. Good luck getting anything out of him now."

"Look, Max, just... Whatever the problem is…"

"They don't love me..." he caught her off guard.

"What?"

"They just don't love me, I know it." he almost whispered without looking up.

"Who? Your parents? I'm sure they just..."

"I'm not stupid, Gwen! I can tell, they never felt it." Max got angry, tears still falling. "They never... even... wanted me." he had trouble finishing through the sobs. "I was... a mistake."

Something hurt in Gwen's chest when she heard Max say that. She could feel her eyes getting misty.

"No kid should say that. No kid should think that… Talk about stage fucking four. Despair is right." the counselor thought. "I can't just stay here and watch this little kid cry his eyes out. Even my cold, unfeeling heart has its fucking limits."

Gwen stepped towards Max who was trying to stop his tears to little success. She kneeled in front of his bed in order to get to his height and embraced him without warning.

"What the..." the boy jolted. "Let go of me, you weirdo!"

"You're not a mistake, Max." Gwen said as he tried to get out of the hug. "You are not a mistake."

He continued trying to get free as a matter of principle more than anything else, fidgeting as he continued crying in her arms. Still, not attempting murder was equivalent to accepting the embrace in Gwen's eyes.

"You can't really think that. You're not usually like this, Max, what got you thinking this shit?"

The boy swallowed another hiccup, still hesitating.

"It just... comes to me." he finally gave in. "I can tune it out most of the time, but... today was bad. And then Neil got sent to the clinic and I was alone in here and..." Max couldn't continue.

It was hard for Gwen to say anything to that.

"How long has this been going on for? Has David known about this trauma? Is that why he was putting up with Max's shit?" she thought before Max continued.

"They probably just fucked and then didn't have the balls to abort me..." he said with no passion in his voice despite his tears. It was as if the though was neither new nor stirring.

"They probably should hav..."

"Max, stop!" Gwen tightened her hug, not believing her ears. "Does he go to sleep like this every night?" she thought as she could feel tears welling up in her own eyes. "This has to stop."

"You don't choose to be born, Max." she said quietly. "You don't choose your parents and you don't choose how they treat you. You're just thrown into this shithole world and expected to survive. It's not your fault." Gwen tried to silence some of the nonsense that had nested itself in Max's head.

She could feel Max had stopped trying to get out of the hug she wasn't letting go of. Her Camp Campbell shirt was getting soaked from his silent tears.

"But what if... what if..." Max stuttered and the silence stretched in the dark tent.

"What?"

"What if it's my fault? What if they hate me... because I'm a shit person." he said as he looked up to Gwen. His eyes were red from all the crying, his hair was messy from burying his face in his pillow and the scowl on it made it clear he was angry at himself.

This made Gwen's heart ache again and she could feel the lump in her throat as she swallowed hard.

"What hurt this kid so much? How were they treating him to make him like this?" she thought.

"Max, I'm sure they don't hate you." she said in disbelief.

"You don't know that. Everyone hates me. The other kids, other grownups... you." he said and averted his eyes from Gwen.

She was about to tell him he was wrong because that's what you did to comfort someone, but she stopped herself. Lying to someone when you were trying to help them was counterproductive. And saying that no one hated Max wouldn't exactly be true. He wouldn't be naive enough to believe her neither.

"See... You can't say I'm wrong." the boy in Gwen's arms said. "I'm going to live alone because I make people's lives miserable and then I'll die alone as well. Might as well man up and get used to it early." he said and tried to pull away from the hug, tears of sorrow and anger flowing down his cheeks.

Gwen was also getting angry. At Max for being so harsh with himself, at the people in his life that allowed him to get to this point, at herself for suddenly caring this much. Or maybe for not starting to care sooner.

"Listen here, you little... Listen here, Max!" she corrected herself, tightening her hold on the boy before he could slip away.

"Did you get expelled from school?"

"No?"

"Did you start smoking? Drinking?"

"No. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Did you burn your house down?"

"What?"

"Did you murder anyone?"

"What the fuck? No!"

"Well then you're not a monster and your parents are the ones who need to man up and deal with your problems. Yeah, you can be an ass, but so can anyone. Leaving you to deal with it by yourself is fucked up."

Max didn't look convinced. He was looking away and trying to stop his sniffling.

"But... I..."

"You..." Gwen said decisively. "Are just a kid, Max. And they're your parents. If you're a little brat, it's their job to see what the problem is, try and help you, talk it out and if that doesn't work, hit you upside the head. Not make you feel like you're all alone and then send you off to some place to get you out of their sights." Gwen finished spitefully. "They're supposed to love you."

The boy had closed his eyes, trying not to start sobbing again.

"Max. Max, look at me." Gwen commanded and the boy hesitantly looked up to meet her purple eyes with his green ones. "You're not alone. You've got your friends, you've got David and you've… got me. You're not a monster. You're just a dick. And that can change if you put a little effort in. And you deserve to be happy. Maybe not here, maybe not now, maybe not with your parents. But you do." she finished, still looking into Max's emerald eyes.

He didn't answer. New tears started welling up and he buried his face in Gwen's shirt. She was out of things to say to make him stop feeling like garbage so she just tightened the hug again and waited for him to get everything out.

When Max's quiet weeping finally stopped, he pulled away from Gwen and wiped his eyes. He was still scowling but he looked like less of wreck. The counselor let go of him, wondering how much of an impact this whole ordeal had.

"Guess a smile would be too much to ask for." she thought. "Not crying himself to sleep tonight is good enough."

Gwen stood up and her legs protested to her having been on the ground for so long.

"It's getting late. You should get some sleep." she said to no response. Max was just sitting on his cot, looking down.

"If you feel alone again, talk to someone. Neil should be back tomorrow, OK?"

Max just nodded.

"You gonna be OK?" Gwen asked as she turned to leave.

Another nod.

"Guess this is as good as it gets for now." she thought as she took her flashlight and raised the tent flap, the chill night air hitting her face.

"This didn't happen, OK?" Max said, the usual ire starting to return to his voice.

"Sure." she said plainly.

"No surprise here, he wouldn't be caught dead admitting to this happening." she thought.

"Gwen?" the boy called, making her turn.

A few seconds passed before Max spoke again.

"Thanks." he said almost inaudibly and turned on his bed, covering himself with his blanket.

Gwen smiled. Something in her chest felt a bit lighter.

"You really are getting soft." she told herself. "Should have told him a bed time story while you were at it."

Despite her sarcasm Gwen was still smiling as she exited into the dark of the night. And maybe it was her imagination but she felt like she could breathe the crisp night air a little more easily.

She was tired. And it wasn't just the day's work. But she was also relieved and a bit proud of herself. Not that anyone was going to commend her for tonight's goings-on. She was planning on indulging Max and not telling anyone. If David caught wind of this, she wouldn't hear the end of it. He'd think she was turning a new leaf or something and she couldn't have that.

"I'm the tough one in this counselor duo after all." she thought.

As she made her way to her cabin in the moonlit night, Gwen rubbed her aching neck.

"Guess a dual-major in psychology is worth something after all." she mused as she went through her pockets for her keys. "Though I don't know if going to some stupid summer camp and getting messed up kids to feel better about their shitty lives is the best use of it." she stopped at the cabin's door, the chill night wind making her tear-stained shirt feel cold.

"Or maybe it is..."

AN:

Yes, Max's tent is thin enough for someone to hear crying coming from inside it. It is also thick enough to stop people in the other tents from hearing the shouting and waking up. It's magic like that.

Also I am in no way claiming to know anything about psychology so you're going to have to excuse me for talking out of my ass when it comes to it. I just wanted a story where Gwen hugs Max and not finding one, wrote it myself, OK? Is that so wrong? Is it?

Seriously though. I doubt I have anything to add to this one unless I figure a way for Gwen to help a different camper. In the off chance that I do, I'm going to cop out and not mark this one as finished yet.

Thank you for your time spent reading this.