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Geo didn't expect his past problems to come back and stab him in the back again.
As a kid, he was always sick in some way, from just simple colds that initially didn't leave much of an impact, to viruses that eventually would leave him always feeling strange and terrible years after they attacked him. Bonzle would always take care of him whenever he fell ill, and she would ensure he wouldn't hurt himself even further in the months after. She often sat by his bedside and stayed with him as he fell asleep. He would toss and turn and whimper in pain, and wake up for comfort as he wept. It hurt her soul to see him in such pain, and even as a child, he knew as well.
As he grew older, Geo developed a fondness for adventure, and he loved to explore the Land of Lost Things. It always had crevices, little nooks and crannies that he had never noticed before, and he found new things every time he went out. He also always had a tendency to accidentally overexert himself.
Sometimes, those accidents left him bedridden for days from his pain and fatigue. His sickness almost killed his love for exploring. A side effect was constant pain in his lower body that never seemed to fully leave him.
When they began to fully set up the Rookery and furnish it in case anyone else would arrive, when Geo was around fourteen, those awful feelings would gradually come back less and less frequently, and for a brief time, he was less ill. Those feelings were in hiding.
When he was twenty, Fritz and Spitz arrived as toddlers. Out of a want to be the parent he never had, he put aside the problems, the ones that were slowly creeping back up, to be the perfect, strong father for them.
After a brief but horrific illness, he developed a new issue, like a tortured detective who had just discovered a new clue as to who was actively ruining his life.
There were moments where Geo knew he'd forgotten something he had learnt ten seconds before. He could feel the gap the memory had left in his mind. When it was something one of the kids told him that he had forgotten, he waited until he was alone. Then he'd sob out of guilt. The solution was to constantly remind himself of something, and repeat it in his mind, as well as writing it down. Neither method was guaranteed to work, but they mostly did.
Occasionally, he shook his head to move his hair out of his face, and there was a faint pain that lingered for hours, as well as a few blurry spots in his vision. Later, all these symptoms revealed themselves as a singular migraine. Each time consisted of mostly the same routine, aside from the time that a migraine only revealed itself when Geo threw up because of it. Either way, the routine was simple for the most part. It was like his migraines were kind enough to give him a warning before ruining his day, like a polite murderer. Eventually, he had learnt to just turn off the lights, bury himself under his covers and sleep through everything when the auras showed themselves.
Then Cole showed up, a little bit after the Merge. He had to hide it even further. Geo didn't want Cole to see him as weak in any way, especially when he started to develop a crush on him. Nobody would want a weak man like him, someone who could break after a simple cold at this rate.
Cole had seen immediately that Geo was a kind-of parental figure to Fritz and Spitz. Geo was terrified that he would see him as an awful parent if he dared let his weaknesses show. Even after Cole had told him about Lilly and her illness, his fear lingered. He wasn't Lilly. Unlike her, he didn't have an excuse, nor did he save his people like she did. He was shunned by them instead.
So he hid it. He hid it for as long as he could.
Sickness, to Geo, was a thief. A cruel thief.
It stole his sense of smell, his taste, and only gave some of it back in the end.
It stole his energy and his capacity to even think at points.
It stole his memory, and only left the most major things in life as crumbs for him to remember, whilst the rest of his mind starved.
He could survive off the crumbs, but he certainly wasn't thriving.
The weight of carrying the supplies for his sculptures was getting nearly suffocating. But he liked making art, even if he had to deal with the steadily-increasing weight of the scrap material he decided to work with. After all, sometimes Cole offered to help.
The first time Cole realised something was wrong was a few months after they got together. They had had a long walk together the day before, and in the moment, he had loved it. It was one of their first proper dates, and the first one the others didn't (accidentally) interrupt. However, in the morning, Geo was tired, more tired than usual, and he was wincing when he got up to prepare breakfast with Cole. But Geo didn't seem to acknowledge it.
Eventually, after breakfast, Cole had enough of watching him act so strangely, and asked what was wrong. He hadn't seen his partner like this before: and if he had, Geo had hid it well enough for him to not notice.
Usually, Geo would brush it off whenever Cole got concerned. But not this time.
Hiding it was getting too difficult.
There was a pause for a second after he had asked him, then…
That was when he finally told him.
The confession had left Geo in tears. He had always been afraid of admitting when something was wrong. There was something so terrifying about having people be worried about him. As well as that, all Geo wanted was to be seen as strong and unbreakable, yet even like a diamond, he could shatter under pressure too. The conversation he thought he'd have to have was too much for him, but Geo knew full well it was inevitable.
There was also the oppressive weight of not knowing exactly what was wrong with him in the first place. He knew so much of this had been caused by his troubled childhood, but he didn't know just what his issues were. The causes seemed to be a mishmash of every single illness he had gone through from his early childhood to his mid-twenties. He had always had a fear of the unknown.
Geo recalled how, after he had tearfully explained everything to him, Cole pulled him into a crushing embrace and let him cry it out. He had told him he would love him no matter what happened, or how he felt. He would still be by his side, and support him. If he needed a shoulder to lean on when things got bad, Cole was there for him, and so was everyone else.
He was so incredibly thankful that Cole could somewhat get it. Apparently recovering from being a ghost is pretty similar to feeling awful all the time. Geo learnt something knew everyday - and that time, he managed not to forget it. The prospect of his boyfriend having been a ghost was too absurd for him to ever forget. It was sheer luck, to have the love of his life be someone who genuinely, fully got it. Plus, they got sidetracked during that conversation, and Cole taught him the many quirks of being a ghost. That was an… interesting discussion.
Despite the difficulty of admitting his issues to him, afterwards, it got a little better for him. Cole had found him a metal cane that could be extended up to his hip. Its colour was a cool purple that matched the streaks in his hair almost perfectly. The aid allowed him to take the pressure off the side that ached the most that day, and he could lean on it when standing. The only downside was that it sometimes made his fingers cramp up a little bit, but that only happened when he used it for a while at a time. And the cramps would wear off pretty quickly anyway.
When he found a permenant marker, Geo let everyone else sign it like a cast. He treasured the signatures dearly. It was like carrying a piece of home and his family everywhere he went.
As well as that, him and Cole had also managed to find the parts of a wheelchair and fuse them together for the rare times it would be best to use it. It was heavy, bulky and rather uncomfortable at times, as it was clearly from a medical institution of some kind, but it did the trick whenever he used it. Unlike his cane, the colour of it was a boring metallic grey, so he painted the handles and wheels of it a bright purple.
As a bonus, Cole would always find opportunities to push his wheelchair whenever they went anywhere. He always loved it when he did that, even if he could push himself perfectly fine. Cole always wanted to do everything for him. It was almost cute.
When the portal to the monastery was repaired, him and Cole managed to get a few packs of painkillers so that the pain didn't feel quite as awful as it usually felt. It took the edge off, though it didn't suppress all of it. Chronic pain is a hard thing to completely push down. It persists.
Cole also managed to get Geo a better wheelchair when he visited the Crossroads, which was both lightweight and had multicoloured wheels. He didn't even need to paint it a different colour to make it less dull this time. Fritz and Spitz believed that the wheels 'made Geo look cooler', which boosted his confidence. It helped him even more than the last one (though Cole would still push him despite his many (teasing) protests).
Things were getting better. Even if he knew his issues wouldn't ever fully go away, he finally had some ways to manage them.
Then it happened. And everything came crashing down on him again.
Geo was blinking in and out of consciousness when he was recovered from the bottom of the training course. Like a ghost between limbo and the living world, he was phasing in and out. However, unlike a ghost, he was miraculously alive.
The world sounded underwater. There were voices he barely recognised, but he could pick out his name being said a few times.
Then he was laid down onto a bed.
He finally, truly woke up in the monastery's infirmary with the faint weight of bandages and thick plasters on his ribs and face and twitching limbs, his eyes stuttering open and half-lidded from his fatigue. It felt like the first time he was seriously ill as a kid, but even worse. He had never been injured this horrifically before.
His memory right before and right after the attack was fuzzy. He faintly recalled the hollowed forms of his loved ones, Frohicky asking rather strange questions about how Bonzle ate, then… Ras. The moment Ras cornered him was the moment the memory dropped off, like a VHS tape with the recording cut off before the ending of an episode.
There was a split second where he woke up beneath the training course. It was dark, and the cold of it bit at his open wounds. He couldn't make out many details at all. His vision was incredibly blurry at that moment.
And then it cut off again.
Presently, there was a faint weight on his hand, someone else's hand. He tensed up. Someone was there with him. Their face was looming over his.
Were they a doctor?
An enemy?
Did he even know them?
Then his vision refocused, and he relaxed slightly. He recognised who they were.
He felt like he could breathe again, albeit shallowly and in short parts.
"C-Cole," Geo croaked out, before jolting up as he violently coughed into his elbow. The harshness of the cough was a rough kick to his already struggling torso. He felt like he had been kicked in the stomach - then he remembered that that was exactly what happened. He hadn't spoken in what felt like forever. "You found me." he added on as he recovered from the coughing fit, through laboured breaths.
Cole gently guided his partner back down onto the bed, cautiously avoiding the injuries on his arms. "Take it easy, Geo," he said. He reached out to gently squeeze his hand to reassure him. "It's only me, alright?"
Geo relaxed slightly. Cole's sweet voice helped him calm down and focus just a little less on the pain in his abdomen, his arms, pretty much everywhere. Then he realised something.
Only?
Only Cole?
Geo's logic hadn't really kicked in yet. He had only just woken up, after all.
It was… only Cole?
"Wh-Where's everyone else?!" he asked in a sudden panic, jolting upright again and barely even processing Cole guiding him to lie down again. He didn't even process the pain that followed his own actions. "Where are they?!" His breath quickened and he was close to hyperventilating.
The last things he remembered of Fritz, Spitz and Bonzle were… essentially their corpses. Their lifeless forms. Almost cadavers. Staring at him, their expressions gaunt and sickly, like they were silently asking him 'Why did you let this happen?'.
Cole quickly noticed his growing anxiety and squeezed his hand again. Gently, he ran his thumb over Geo's knuckles, then laced their fingers together. Geo made him worried sick sometimes with how anxious he could get. "They're fine, they're fine… They're back now."
Geo blinked, then fully settled back down against the pillow of his infirmary bed. "Oh… Thank the Sources," he whispered. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then back at Cole. The feeling of being conscious was finally kicking in. Geo weakly laughed. "Everything feels worse now." His voice was hoarse and quiet, but at least he could finally talk to his loved ones.
Cole couldn't help but laugh as well, even if the situation was so awful. "I know it does, Geo. That's why I said you should take it easy." he reminded him.
"Yeah," he responded, then he sighed. "I always forget to, don't I?"
Geo was physically alive. His heart was still pumping blood around his body. His lungs were functioning well enough for him to breathe. Yet his skin was cold to the touch, and right now, he didn't feel like he was functioning particularly well.
Sometimes, whenever he was feeling like this, he felt as if he were a spectator watching a film from the point-of-view of a random person's eyes. No move he made was his own.
Cole squeezed his hand again, and pressed his forehead against his. "You do, sometimes. But you're gonna be just fine. Like you always end up. Just. Fine."
And then he felt Cole's arms wrap around him. Cole was wary of his wounds, and avoided them the best he could.
With shaking arms, Geo embraced him in return and held him as tight as his weakened body allowed. "I love you." he mumbled into his shoulder.
"I love you too, Geo."
Recovery was difficult.
He took around a week to rest, with minimal physical activity beyond walking around the Rookery with his cane. Cole had managed to bring Geo to their room in the Rookery. He wanted to recover there, surrounded by the warmth and familiarity of home. And, Cole decided to stay with him as much as possible.
Sometimes, Geo imagined that the Land of Lost Things itself was protecting him from harm. It had brought him here for a reason; everyone at his first home had forgotten about him. Then, it had introduced him to Bonzle, then brought the children and eventually led him to the love of his life. It provided him with food of varying quality, and its portal gate was certainly convenient. The land's scrap allowed him to make half of it accessible for both himself and everyone else, whenever he used his mobility aids. Even if his modifications were rudimentary, they did the job.
The day he brought him back to the Rookery, Cole had told him what he'd done to try and save them. Shocked was an understatement when it comes to Geo's reaction. Cole constantly putting himself in the face of danger terrified him, but then again, it was his job. Still, Geo had told him that he didn't need to do that for them.
Geo tried his best to reassure Fritz and Spitz that he'd be okay. He had attempted to explain his issues in the past, that on some days he felt relatively fine, but on other days he wasn't particularly… there. Some days, he felt tired and too pained to do much at all. They understood it.
One night, the kids went into Cole and Geo's room because they wanted them to read to them. This was a pretty common thing, and Geo was secretly thankful for the sense of normalcy.
They'd brought a Starfarer comic for them to read to them; Geo already knew about a lot of the lore, both from Fritz and Spitz's rambling about it and the secondhand (and fuzzy) knowledge that Cole had of it from Lloyd and Jay.
Whenever they read the comics out (to the best of their abilities), Cole mainly played Fritz Donnegan, and Geo played pretty much every other character. His voice had recovered a little bit, and speaking was a lot easier than it was than when he first awoke. Geo was a decent actor himself, and he put as much emotion as possible into voicing the comic issue out.
The kids giggled as they sat on the edge of the bed. Geo's heart practically melted at the sound and the weight near his bandaged legs; it was a nice distraction from the pain that still lingered. They reminded Geo of himself when he was younger, when he wasn't ill.
He tried to keep the comic in view for Fritz and Spitz. Their eyes would always go wide at all the gorgeous illustrations on the page, and they usually spent more time in awe at them than listening to their parental figures read to them. Both Cole and Geo found that endearing.
Perhaps Geo should get into Starfarer himself. He was quite invested in the plot unfolding in the issues they'd recently read. And it must've been good, if his sons had named themselves after the main character. Having Cole often play the part of the admittedly rather attractive protagonist didn't help his interest in it either.
Then they finished the issue, and Cole handed the comic back to them.
Geo laid back down in bed and rested his head on Cole's shoulder. He gave the kids a tired smile, and he was about to send them off to bed, then:
"…Will you be okay?" Fritz asked. He cocked his head to the side, his eyes wide with genuine concern.
Geo frowned for a brief moment, then regained his smile. He didn't want to worry his own children. He patted Fritz's head for reassurance, then Spitz's. "I've gone through things like this before," he stated. It wasn't entirely untrue. He had never been this horrifically injured, but it still felt like being ill. "I'll be perfectly fine, okay?"
There were hints of tears in his eyes. He was uncertain himself. He was terrified of his future.
But he blinked them away.
The kids seemed to understand. They seemed to have a vague understanding of Geo's issues anyway.
Cole took the hint that Geo wasn't feeling great and stepped in. "He'll be fine, alright? Now, it's getting late, and we'll need to go to sleep soon, so I think you two should do the same." he said.
He gave them both kisses on the forehead and watched them run off to their bedroom, then he got up and closed the door for both their comfort.
Cole got back into bed and wrapped an arm around Geo's shoulders.
"You okay?" he asked. He kept his voice quiet, to help keep him calm.
"Not really, no," Geo responded. The tears were fully gone, replaced by just… a cold, hollow feeling. "Just glad I survived all that."
"The fight?"
"Yeah, and everything else. Mainly my childhood." Geo weakly laughed after saying that. His main coping mechanism was humour, after all.
"Fair enough."
Cole pulled Geo a little closer against his side. His injuries had healed over the week, but he was still wary of them. Geo had had a few painkillers, but they didn't exactly do a good job of actually killing the pain. He understood why though; it was still quite severe.
On instinct, Geo's hand found Cole's under the soft covers, and he gently grabbed it. His loved ones were a great comfort during times like these, either due to flare-ups or due to injuries. Especially Cole.
"…I'm glad you can still deal with me." Geo then said, rather self-deprecatingly .
"Geo," Cole turned to face him fully, and he rested his forehead against his to emphasise the point he was about to make. "I'm staying with you no matter what happens, alright? You don't have to be perfectly healthy all the time. I know what it's like."
Geo blinked, then nodded with a sigh. It was slightly hard to believe, though he found the concept of anyone being able to care about him hard to believe in general. "…Yeah. I believe you."
"Good." Cole smiled, then stretched his limbs out and yawned. He himself had recovered quickly from being hollowed, but one side effect was getting tired more easily.
That fact did make Geo slightly smug. Finally, he wasn't alone. Cole could feel that pain. Again. "Huh, tired already? It's not that late, Cole."
Cole mock-glared at him, but he couldn't stop himself from yawning again. "Shut up." he grumbled, but then he pulled Geo into his arms again. "I'm just glad you're okay, Geo." he added on.
"I'm glad you're okay as well."
That night was the first night in a while that he managed to drift off to sleep easily.