Archive of Our Own

As a baby, Geo supposes he could’ve passed for a Geckle.

For the time being, at least, the thing that stands out the most about him is his skin. His teeth have not yet grown and he’s still not taller than an adult Munce, and if he stays by the shadows long enough, nobody notices the orange glow of his eyes.

But for some reason, he spends the first years of his childhood with the Munce.

He’s not sure why. He is very much not like them, and that’s painfully evident to anyone with eyes. Maybe his mother was a Munce and she died giving birth to him in this place, and nobody thought to move him since he was an infant. But it’s also just as likely that his mother was a shameful Geckle who left him in a crib on the threshold of the Munce, hoping that his father’s family would take care of him. Or maybe they were both shameful and scared and ran away without looking back. Maybe. Geo is too young to know. 

“So, what are we supposed to do with it?”

He looks up from the crayon drawing he’s making on the ground. The adults are arguing again. They take turns to give him food, and a bed each night, and as long as he minds his own business, as much as a child can, he’s fine. He doesn’t mind that. He’s content with just drawing on the floors or playing with rocks or exploring the tunnels by himself. Once he went all the way up to the gardens of Shintaro and managed to sneak into the castle when everyone was asleep. Nobody saw him or even noticed he was gone. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants.

But apparently, so are the grown-ups.

“Well, I can’t take him tonight. I already did yesterday,” one of them’s saying. Geo likes that one. He’s the one that makes the good food and who doesn’t call him an it.

“And I had it last week! It’s supposed to be her turn now.”

“Well, I have the baby now. I can’t be feeding another child.”

“Just have your eldest watch over him. She’s old enough.”

“You think I’m gonna let my kids mix with that?”

They often talk about him like that. Geo usually likes hiding and sneaking and being comfortable between the rocks. It’s what kids his age seem to do. But he quickly learns that there’s no need for that if he wants to eavesdrop on conversations. People often act like he’s not around, which is better than the alternative of people just pointing at him and whispering like he can’t hear, or screaming like he can hear anything. Adults have no problem discussing him when he’s around.

“Maybe…” one of them says, and she’s the first one to look at him or otherwise acknowledge his presence. She’s also the one who gives him her daughter’s old room when it’s her turn to take him for the night, and the one who keeps giving him looks of pity instead of disgust, and the one who calls him a he and the one who still pushes him outside her house once her turn is done. “Maybe we could give him up to the Geckles. He has purple skin, after all.”

And she doesn’t say anything else, but that, right there, it’s the nicest Geo can ever remember being offered. It’s almost like she’s giving something to him. He goes very still and looks back at her, his drawings abandoned.

It’s the most kindness he’s ever been given and it’s not even true.

He can tell that in the silence that comes afterwards, only broken when one of them says, “Its fangs will start growing soon enough.”

And then the one with the nice food says, “They’ll never accept him.”

And Geo keeps hearing those words, whether he hides between the rocks or doesn’t, whether he wants to listen in or not. The adults speak either way. The adults don’t care. So he keeps hearing the words freak and hybrid and shame and disgusting and sometimes, the best of times, poor thing, and every time, I can’t take him and who would ever take him.

He never speaks. And the adults behave like he never listens. Like he wouldn’t mind whether the words were kind or not. And why would he? When he doesn’t speak? When this is objectively the truth, and he’s too young to know why but he’s old enough to know that it is? What would be the point of telling him that the Geckles would want him, or what his mother’s name was, when they don’t know or they only know an ugly truth? What would be the point of telling him otherwise?

He’s a kid. Can he even understand them? Why should he mind?

For most of his childhood, he thinks he won’t.

But then, at some point, he realizes he does.

So he leaves. One day he sneaks into the tunnels and keeps going down as far as he can. Nobody seems to even notice that he’s run away.

So he leaves, and he never comes back.

The time in-between is foggy in his mind. Geo doesn’t remember much more about his childhood in the dungeons, and he’s not sure how old he was when he ran away and no one noticed. He’s not sure how he managed to stumble into the Land of Lost Things, or how he figured out how that place worked and why he couldn’t leave. He supposes he must’ve come across some other living things at some point or another, because he can’t be the only person who was lost and rejected and forgotten, he can’t be, he can’t be that much of a freak. He supposes someone must’ve taught him how to speak, because he doesn’t remember hearing the sound of his own voice until he was a teenager, but he’s honestly not sure. All of it seems unimportant in the back of his mind.

That is, until the kids show up.

Bonzle’s the first. Geo is still pretty young when he finds her, although he never would’ve pictured her as an ancient spell in the form of a small skeleton when they first met, but she still looks like a child to him. She’s curled up on herself like she’s cold, despite being completely made of bones and empty spaces, all trembling and uncertain and looking as scared as the runaway puppy that Geo found the other day. But she doesn’t seem confused in the slightest, which is more than what Geo can say for himself, despite being trapped in this place for so long.

That’s probably what draws him to her, more than the puppy or anyone else he might’ve come across in all these years. Small and understanding, like children are. Why should Geo know that in the first place, beats him.

She looks up from where she seems to be hiding, next to a pile of junk, and finds him standing by a geyser, his hands filled with semi-rotten vegetables, just staring at her.

“Who are you?” she asks. Her eyes are glowing, not quite like Geo’s orange light, but it looks more like him than any of the Munce. “And why are you looking at me like that?”

And Geo can’t explain the thing that overcomes him, or why it makes sense to him, even then, that a child would know so much despite being so scared. It matters very little that Bonzle isn’t either a child or afraid, as he later finds out. Because the helplessness he sees in her glowing eyes is real, still. He still feels for her. So he sets down the ingredients and starts walking up to approach her.

She flinches as soon as he gets close enough. And it makes no sense that Geo of all people would know what to do, what she might need. Because he was raised by no one, and he was never allowed to be around other kids, and because he’s never been around that many skeletons either. And because he can’t even remember how he learned to talk, so how should he know how to effectively use his words?

But maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not the things he had when he was a kid but the ones he didn’t. Maybe he’s got enough insight to figure it out on his own, to realize that if she flinches it’s because he doesn’t have to come any closer, to know what he would’ve wanted someone to say to him when he first arrived.

“I’m Geo,” he tells her. “It’s okay. You don’t have anything to fear. It’s gonna be alright.”

And this is the first lie he can remember telling in his life.

He feels the slightest sense of guilt as he says it, because however he learned how to speak he must’ve learned to develop a conscience. But then the skeleton girl does something with her glowy eyes and the edges of her jaw, and she says, “Oh. So you’re trying to comfort me,” and she gives him a look like it’s working.

And that’s all the reassurance he needs.

She’s the first person he sees other than in passing, the first person he doesn’t forget in the land of the forgotten, the first person that he can talk to other than himself. He talks a lot more after that. And he also tells a few more lies.

Only if that’s what the child needs, of course. Sometimes, they do.

It becomes a lot easier after that first time.

Bonzle, as it turns out, is not as young as she looks, and she’s very smart and sassy at times. Yet, when it comes to the lies, she seems content to just take them. And because she’s so smart, Geo supposed that must make him a very convincing liar. Which is reassuring, in a way, since he’s never lied to anyone before.

It’s either that, or she somewhat enjoys the feeling of being treated as if she were Geo’s kid. That is almost certainly not true, because whatever little emotion she does show is usually limited to annoyance when he offers to do something in her place, or when he goes a little too far with his white lies enough that she starts to feel he’s being patronizing. He made sure to stop that as soon as he noticed the problem. But also, he can kind of relate to the feeling of wanting to be cared for by someone else, wanting to have someone who doesn’t put the burden of knowledge and truth upon your shoulders.

One way or another, it’s… complex. It is so much easier with the boys. It is almost necessary. Even if he can’t help but wonder if that’s a lie he’s telling to himself.

“It’s back, it’s back, it’s back, it’s back,” the child in his arms cries, and it’s late at night, and they’re far away from the Rookery, and their only source of light is the missing lamp that Bonzle found that Geo somehow managed to put back together enough to work. And they weren’t supposed to be out this late and go so far from home that they couldn’t find their way back, but. But Fritz wanted to explore. And Geo didn’t know how to say no to him.

Yes, we can explore. That was a lie. That was another lie, and a bad one, this time, because, as Bonzle so kindly would put it, like heck we can. There’s the Hoarder, and there’s the things that lurk in the shadows of the forgotten and don’t have a lot of people to hunt down besides the Finders, and Geo should know better than to go exploring in the place where everything gets lost. He should know better than the child, than the one who barely knows this land by now, the one who’s currently crying and wailing in his arms that it came back, the monster came back for me.

“You need to get him to shut up,” Bonzle says, dry as always, from the corner where she’s standing. The three of them were ready to just camp under the open sky and wait for the sun to rise to find their way back home, and then Hoarder showed up. They managed to find shelter in the tunnels of a pile of junk, but that hasn’t stopped Fritz from screaming at the sight of the giant. “Otherwise, it’s gonna find us sooner, and it’s gonna eat us.”

That only makes Fritz cry harder.

Geo doesn’t know what to do, where to put his hands, but Fritz’s panicked instincts seem to make the choice for him, just gripping into the worn fabric of Geo’s vest as if he could somehow protect him, mumbling nonsense about monsters between gasps and sobs.

Except it’s not really nonsense, is it. The Hoarder’s very much real. So are the Munce who used to call him an it, and the Geckle that only agreed with them on that. There’s the tales he remembers hearing about Grief-Bringer and Milly, that Munce parents used to tell their kids. Monsters are not just something under the bed, and even if they were, children do grow up and forget. It only makes sense for the monster to end up in the Land of Lost Things.

“It’s not real, Fritz,” he mumbles, still, struggling to make himself heard over the boy’s cries. “I swear, if you just close your eyes, it goes away. It can’t hurt you.”

“It killed them,” Fritz sobs. He sounds like he’s back there, wherever he was before he got here, before everyone he ever knew was killed by a monster and there was no one left to remember him. He sobs and wheezes, barely managing to get any words out, and it looks like he can’t breathe, like he’s stuck there in the memory where Geo can’t reach him. “It came and attacked and there was nothing left, and it killed them all, and now it’s back for me—”

“But it’ll go away.” Geo cups his face between his hands, and pulls him closer. He holds him tightly against his chest in a feeble attempt to muffle his cries. And also just to hold him. Just to hold him… “It won’t find you here. It can’t hurt you. I promise you, little one. I won’t let him.”

Bonzle gives him a look from over the corner, like maybe she can see right through it easier than the kid, or maybe it’s the little one that’s got to her, and that’s just one of the many things Geo’s adding to the junk pile of can’t explain. But she also looks the tiniest bit sheepish, and she stares at the boy slowly calming wrapped in Geo’s embrace like she’s feeling guilty for not helping out more. Geo only knows to look back at her and smile. As if to tell her the same lie. Because if it worked the first time, and if it works for Fritz now, maybe it can work for her as well now.

Why would she stay with them otherwise?

“If…” Fritz suddenly whimpers against Geo’s chest, and then he mumblers something unintelligible.

“What’s that?”

The kids sobs again. “If I hadn’t been so afraid… it would’ve left us alone?”

And oh, Geo should really know better than that. Kids always notice more than people think, don’t they.

“Oh, kiddo,” he mutters, and his voice shakes. He can feel something inside his chest shattering as he holds onto the kid, and he wonders if anyone would’ve felt the same about him when he was Fritz’s age. If the Munce who gave him those pity looks had to fight back tears as she did it, or if she moved on with her life immediately afterwards.

It’s selfish, but he hopes that she thought of him. He wishes she’d held him. He wishes she’d been kind enough to actually attempt to comfort him, kind enough to lie to him. To treat him as a child, dumb and clueless, rather than expect him to put up with the words and the silence and the looks of disgust as if his skin was thick as steel.

He says, “Of course not.” He says, “Of course it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have prevented it. It’s like a bad dream, you see. It just happens. It’s no one’s fault. But then you wake up, and it just goes away. It goes away.”

He keeps whispering that and swearing that, and making promises he can’t promise to keep, and caressing the boy’s back until he can feel his muscles relaxing and his breath turning even and his body growing quieter and peaceful in his hold, and until he thinks he can hear the Hoarder walking away from them. He looks over Fritz’s head, shares a glance with Bonzle and sighs.

The best lies have some truth to them, he learns.

Of course, it’s not always a sad thing. Lying can be fun sometimes, just like the Land of Lost Things can be beautiful.

“But Geeeeeo!” Spitz whines, in a way that’s so clearly distinct from how he cries when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and therefore very much not serious. “I’m not hungryyyy!”

“Yes, you are,” Geo tells him, putting a lot of effort into keeping a straight face. “And these are actually healthy, for once, you can’t just skip them.”

Spitz looks at the plate of vegetables that’s set on the table, which, Geo will admit (or won’t, not in front of the kids), doesn’t look or smell all that appetizing. He’s also not the best cook in the world, even if a soup made up of boiled vegetables should be fairly easy and hard to mess up. They are healthy, at least, and Geo’s made sure of that, cleaning and chopping them himself. They look especially good for food that someone threw away, so Geo chooses to believe they might’ve come from a box that someone forgot by the side of the road, fresh and just bought from a market. All in all, pretty unusual for the Land of Lost Things, and not something their little family can afford to waste.

The practicality of it is actually a lot more depressing than the lies, and certainly not enough for the little Serpentine boy in front of him refusing to eat his vegetables.

“But I’m tired and I don’t like it. Don’t we have any wafers left?” he asks cheerfully, looking up in Geo’s direction.

“We’re saving those up for breakfast, kiddo, you know that.” Geo has to purposefully look away from his cute little red eyes. He’s not in the mood to find out if Spitz’s Hypnobrai powers are already manifesting, or for the kid to find out that he can hypnotize him to get more dessert. “Come on. Just a few more bites and then you can go to bed.”

Spitz looks back at the plate. Then back at Geo. “But the carrots taste ugly.”

Geo sighs, loudly. If only the carrots were the biggest of their problems.

Spitz also doesn’t seem particularly tired, just bored out of his mind and craving sweets like all children do.

Alright. Time to bring out the big guns.

“Do you know what happens when you don’t eat your vegetables?”

Spitz’s eyes light up. “Will my scales become purple, like your skin? Oh, wait! Will I turn into a skeleton, like Bonzle? That would be ssso cool!”

“What… No, that’s not what I…” Geo sighs again, swapping looks with Bonzle from across the table. She just shrugs, unhelpful. “If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’re not gonna be healthy and strong.”

“But you eat them all the time and you’re not healthy and strong.”

Fritz stifles a laugh behind his fist. Bonzle gives Geo a sarcastic look of pity. He makes an effort not to roll his eyes. These kids, really.

“I am healthy and strong, just not in the way you’re thinking. I don’t have big muscles and such but I got my powers, don’t I?”

“Yes!” Fritz yells, enthusiastically, choosing that moment to actively join in the conversation. He grabs his empty cup and a tiny, withered flower that he’s been holding onto the entire day since he found it in the trash this morning. “Do the thing!”

Geo takes the items and fuses them together, wrapping the flower around the cup like a sort of patterned design. Fritz claps with excitement. It’s only recently that they’ve figured out Geo’s special abilities, but the kids already love them. They treasure them like they do with every new thing that shows up in the Land, keeping it beautiful and precious for as long as they can, and they’re already fascinated by the concept of Geo’s art and what he can do with it now. Even if they’re a little weirded out and confused by the meanings behind his sculptures.

“But I’m not gonna get your powers just because I eat my carrots,” Spitz points out.

“Who knows?” Geo shrugs. “All I know is, I had my vegetables as a child and now I have powers. Guess it could happen to anyone.”

(That is, of course, the biggest lie of them all, with a very very little ounce of truth almost left insignificant. Nobody that briefly cared for him when he was a child worried about giving him a meal that was healthy. But this wasn’t supposed to be sad.)

A wide smile shows up in Spitz’s face, and he looks at Geo with bright eyes. “Really? So if I’m strong and healthy my Serpentine powers might develop early too?”

“Well, that’s not—”

“Okay, then!” And then he proceeds to stab the food with such eagerness one could easily look past the grimace in his face whenever he’s chewing a particularly ugly veggie. Yeah, maybe Geo’s really not a good cook. Or maybe kids are just like that with vegetables and he shouldn’t worry about it too much.

For all his complaining, Spitz does eat it all, including the carrots. And Geo’s ready to finish his own soup and call it a job well done when the boy mutters, “Tassstes better than in the sewers, anyway.”

And Geo freezes over his bowl, pretending he didn’t hear dungeons instead of sewers.

This wasn’t supposed to be sad.

He stays quiet for a second or two. Spitz seems oblivious both to what he just said and the way that Geo is staring at him. He just makes a face as he finishes up with his plate and stocks his forked tongue out. “Yuck.”

“Hey,” Geo says, “you know what else are vegetables good for?”

“What else?”

Geo gets from his chair and slowly, very slowly, walks up to the kid. He lifts his arms in an ominous manner, makes a funny voice and all.

“Well, since they smell so gross, they can mask your natural smell.” He stands behind Spitz’s chair and looks him in the eyes with his hands hovering over his shoulders. “That way, things like the Hoarder won’t be able to pick up your scent and… eat you!”

He attacks when the boy least expects it, after a moment of calm, and Spitz laughs and yells as he tickles him under his arms. He throws punches in the air and kicks, nearly flipping the table and the food, but Geo doesn’t mind if that makes him laugh.

“Geo! Geo, stop! Stop!” he screams between cackles, at the same time that Fritz jumps from his seat proclaiming “I want to join in too!” and starts tickling his brother as well.

It quickly develops into a fiercer battle, from which Bonzle remains happily distanced in the corner, and Geo can only shake his head in disbelief at her and himself and the person he’s become over the years.

Spitz doesn’t even need hypnosis for Geo to give him anything, it seems.

“Cole, look out!”

A car goes flying over their heads, and Geo shouts his warning almost a second too late. It barely misses Fritz and Spitz, standing beside Cole, if only because they’re so short, but the ninja only comes out of it alive because he’s insanely powerful and gifted with superhuman strength, which allows him to take the punches in ways that Geo didn’t think were possible.

He is starting to look a little tired, though. He jumps and he blasts the car back in the Hoarder’s direction with an Earth Punch, but he nearly falls to his knees when he lands, and he’s panting for air as he turns to look at Geo.

“Thanks for the head’s up,” he rasps, gently pushing the boys towards Bonzle, and she takes running back to the noodle cup. There’s a horrible sound when the Hoarder gets hit with the car, followed immediately by a more horrible one when he roars in pain and anger, and Cole winces, bracing himself. “Not my best idea, it seems.”

Geo motions Bonzle to take the boys further away from the scene and approaches Cole to help him up. He looks almost worse than he did when he first fell on the Land a couple of weeks ago, the very brief fight managing to undo all that time of healing after the Merge. There are bruises and his hair is tousled and Geo doesn’t like the way he’s supporting his weight only on his right ankle, or the grimace that crosses his face when he steps on the left one.

They both stare at the Hoarder as it gets back on its feet. The only thing they seem to have to their advantage is how slow it is, but that can only get them so much time, and that thing becomes faster and more erratic the angrier it gets.

“Come on. We have to run,” Geo says, urgently, grabbing Cole’s shoulder. They’re not so far from the Rookery this time, and his kids are older now, not that prone to start crying and screaming for help at the sight of a monster. They know what they’re doing. They can make it.

But Cole doesn’t seem to take that as a possibility. There’s something in his face, besides the new bruises, something that’s glowing with fury and determination, and Geo’s heart sinks as he takes in the fire in his eyes and realizes he’s not gonna be able to talk him down.

“I’m not gonna hide,” Cole says, and he puts his fists together. The lines of his body light up with the sheer force of his power, the markings on his face shining like fire, but Geo can’t stop thinking that they look more like scars. “You take the kids to the Rookery. I’ll buy us some time.”

“No!” Geo screams, even though he knows it’s useless. He knows, by the look on his face, that Cole isn’t listening to him right now, that he’s only listening to the voices of his team, to the people that only live inside his mind now and that he’s not sure he’ll ever see again, if they’re even alive. He has that face that he’s had for the past weeks while Geo was taking care of him, treating the bruises and the broken bones and hoping the brain damage would sort itself out, that look he had when he couldn’t fall asleep and couldn’t stand on his legs to walk away, but kept thinking about the family he’d left behind, whispering to them in dreams when he thought Geo wouldn’t hear him. He’s been talking to ghosts, if you will.

Geo would just prefer it if he didn’t become one right now.

He used to think he’d seen everything in the Land of Lost Things, but that place always has a way to prove him wrong. Cole is like nothing he’s ever seen before. Cole scares him, both his powers and the way he handles himself with them, a lot stronger and heavier and more violent than Geo ever could with his Fusion and his little art show, and with the way he keeps looking at the ceiling sometimes like he wants to be gone. Like he wants the Earth to swallow him whole if it can’t take him back to his family. But he’s been walking and sleeping for weeks now, and they’ve been getting along, and he’s been talking to the kids and going out with them, so Geo thought… Geo thought…

But he sees it now, in his eyes. He wants to come back to his family so desperately, and he can’t. He won’t. So. So he’s looking at the Hoarder and he looks like he’s gonna throw as many punches at it as he can.

Geo dreads for him.

“I told you, you can’t fight it,” he insists, desperate. “We can’t just leave you here!”

“At least that way I’ll keep it distracted so that it doesn’t come after you,” Cole says, and then his voice turns a little bit softer, the muscles in his shoulder relax if only a little bit under Geo’s touch. “That’s the only way I can keep you all safe.”

And maybe it’s because Geo’s grown used to associating the idea of safety to the idea of lies that he tells the kids, or maybe it’s because he remembers so very little from his own childhood and who’s to say his parents didn’t ever say the same thing before disappearing from his life. Or maybe it is that he’s been caring for this man for weeks now, treating his wounds, feeding him in his sleep, helping him relearn how to walk beside his children.

One way or another, he feels a sense of panic settling in his bones as Cole slips under his grasp and walks towards the monster, so much that he barely notices the Hoarder running up towards them. All he sees is Cole’s back to him, and the glowing from his powers and his marks, and all he hears is a made up memory, a lie that he’s telling himself, now, to justify what he’s about to do for this one guy. He’s thinking of people leaving and people loving and he thinks he hears it, mom, dad, but that’s a child version of him. Children can easily be lied to.

He thinks he hears himself trying to scream, but barely any sound comes out of his lips. Nothing more than Cole, Cole’s name, only his name.

“Cole.” He reaches out with a hand to touch him. He’s not fast enough, strong enough. Lies can’t save them from this. Art can’t protect them. He’s gonna lose him. “Cole, wait—”

He’s only quick enough to grab him by the hand. The suddenness of it seems to take him by surprise and Cole turns, eyes widened when they see the look on Geo’s face.

And then something happens that Geo can’t explain.

He knows the feeling of power flowing through his veins, but not like this. It’s usually peaceful, calm, a sign of everything being good with the world, with their world, with the Land. It’s supposed to be something that heals, something that fixes, not punches of power like Cole’s. And it’s not supposed to work on living things. They’ve learned that through very stressing circumstances involving battles and amateur wound care. If it did, Geo would’ve just fused Cole’s hand to his own, right here, right now, and prevented him from ever getting away again.

That shouldn’t work. But Geo reaches out nonetheless, with whatever little power that he has, in a desperate attempt to stop him from leaving.

He feels a surge, something growing inside of him when it happens. And Cole stares into his eyes like he can see it too, Earth markings glowing just as bright as Geo’s.

They stay like that for only a moment.

Then, the Hoarder attacks.

Cole barely kicks Geo out of the way in time before getting hit by a mechanical hand. Geo reacts too late again, and is already on the ground when he sees him calling out to the Earth like he always does, summoning power to strike back.

Yet, it’s never done anything like this.

“Get back!”

Cole’s element wraps itself around his body like it’s an armor, and a second later, where Cole was, there’s a giant warrior made of magma and stone, glowing and screaming, eyes hot with rage like Cole’s fury is sometimes. And it’s taller and bigger and a lot angrier when he runs back against the Hoarder, but when it speaks, the voice’s unmistakably his.

“Geo, I said get away!”

His body responds before the words fully reach him, his legs pulling him away from the scene, although he can’t take his eyes off of it. The rock monster jumps and plants itself in front of the Hoarder before it can get to them. He throws a couple of punches around, but nothing more, preferring to use his strength to just keep it at bay, pushing and holding it in one place, pinning him in whatever way so that it doesn’t get any closer.

He did listen, Geo realizes.

And he’s strong, he thinks, all big and, and strong, he feels his face heating up all the way to the tip of his ears.

So strong, in fact, he manages to push the Hoarder off balance and make it trip on its own feet, falling to the ground.

Everything shakes under the weight of it, and the rock armor turns to look at Geo with his fiery eyes, running as fast as he can in the opposite direction from the other monster. Geo doesn’t even think to flinch. Cole picks up in those huge arms of his, tough and fierce, and carries them as far as he can, wrapping himself around Geo’s body to keep him safe and protected until they’re certain they’ve left the Hoarder behind.

“How?” Geo asks once they’re back in the Rookery, back with the kids, and they’ve found a minute of peace and solitude after a good while of being bombarded with questions from the boys. The armor falls apart in a second at the sight of them and Cole re-emerges from the pile of rocks with his normal eyes and arms and a huge smile on his face. “How did you do that? That was—I didn’t know you could—”

“I can’t,” Cole says, short of breath. “Not usually. I mean, my power’s done weird things before, but I’d never… never been able to manifest something like… Like that. It was you!”

Geo feels as if he’d been hit with a bucket of cold water. “…What?”

“Didn’t you feel it?” Cole asks, and it’s not cold water, it’s just his face. His eyes, all bright and joyous, and the widest smile Geo’s seen on his face since the first time they met, since he fell on the Land of Lost Things. And maybe it’s that he’s shaped his body into something that’s always preparing for the worst, or maybe it’s that Cole’s expression looks like something Geo never thought he’d get to experience.

But one way or another, he stops breathing for a second.

“You felt it, didn’t you?” Cole says again. “It was our powers. Both of them. You touched me, and it was as if… as if, you were powering me up. Like, we shared powers, or we mixed them, or we connected, but it was like an Earth thing made out of Fusion! Couldn’t you feel it?”

And Geo immediately jumps into the logical line of thinking, because that’s what you have to do when you live with two boys who don’t have fully developed brains yet. He thinks, my power doesn’t work on things that are alive. He thinks, my bonds don’t break unless I want them to, and your armor just fell to pieces to the ground. He thinks, I felt something, but it was not the thing you’re talking about, and it probably never will.

“Geo?” He realizes he’s been lost in thought for a full minute or two when Cole’s voice takes him out of it. He finds his eyes, still beaming, still staring at him so eternally happy. Like for the first time he’s not thinking about leaving this place. Like he’s seeing what’s in front of him and feeling content to be here. “What is it?”

And he’s convinced. Himself, on his own, told himself a lie and believed it. Geo doesn’t even have to do anything. He’s an adult, but it was almost easier than if he were one of the kids. Maybe he wanted something hopeful to latch onto as well. Maybe he’s just naturally naive, naturally romantic. Maybe he’s seeing things that Geo can’t see, after years of training as an Elemental Master.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s onto something here, he’s seeing the actual truth.

But Geo knows that would just be another lie.

He remembers what it felt like to see him leave, to think he was gonna lose him. To think he was gonna be abandoned again. Just another person who wouldn’t be there to remember him. He remembers all these past weeks and how long it took him to see Cole smile.

He breathes. He thinks, the Munce and the Geckles were right about me.

“I didn’t know I could do that either,” he says.

It tastes so much worse than the carrots.

Cole grins and he starts going off on a rant about tests and possibilities and Elemental Powers, and he does say, if my team were here, but he’s not sad about it, and he’s not thinking about leaving now. And he’s all happy and excited, still, but Geo can only see the new bruise that’s forming under his left eye, and he reaches out to touch it. Cole notices and stops talking. He looks at him. Geo freezes and pulls his hand back before he can bring himself to touch him. If my power worked on living things, you’d be fused here and you would never leave me.

He clears his throat. “We gotta take a look at that bruise,” he says.

And Cole follows him into the Rookery, and that’s the end of that conversation.

The lying was never about making the kids feel better, was it.

It was just easier for him that way.

“But I can’t do it without you.”

Telling the truth is not the hardest part. Geo knows how to live with the weight on his chest and the guilt biting on his cheeks. It gets easier, the older the kids grow and the more intimately he and Cole get to know each other. Half the work is already done by pure circumstance.

Nobody taught him to lie. Nobody taught him to care.

But they taught him plenty about shame.

Geo knows how to deal with that.

The hardest part comes afterwards, when the other person tries to keep it up, because it takes two people to build a lie. The teller and the believer.

“I know it seems that way,” Geo says, because he does, “but my powers don’t work on living things.”

Cole looks at him, half staring, half unfocused and lost in his own thoughts, trying to rationalize everything that’s happened in the last few years now that he knows the truth. The fact that he thought he needed Geo just as much as Geo needed him. The fact that it was all a lie. “So… it’s just been me all along?”

Geo has to look down. “I was too scared to tell you,” and never, in all these few years, has the truth felt any heavier. “I thought you would leave if you didn’t need me.”

And he can’t look him in the eyes, him, or any of his kids, as he confesses to his lies. I stayed here to protect them, Cole said so himself, but why should Geo, of all beings, of all things, deserve to be protected? How could he expect Cole to stay? How could he hope for him to understand him? Because Cole would stay for the kids, maybe, but he would never lie to them. Hasn’t. Doesn’t. He told them the story of the serpent that cast him into a frozen hell, he told them of that time he lost his body and he walked away from a temple with only his soul, he told them of the many, many times he lost any of his friends, and the many, many ways in which it happened, every time. He’s strong and honest and kind, and Geo dared to hope for an eternity of that.

But now his old teammate has come back, and Geo… Geo is fine with that. He’s content with what he got to have. He’s capable of taking care of the kids on his own. Cole doesn’t need to fight the Hoarder anymore, now that it’s gone. They can go back to the way things were. Geo won’t force him to stay, won’t keep him grounded to this land with pleas and powers and lies.

(Nevermind how much, how desperately he wants him to stay.)

Still, the young woman’s arrival makes him painfully aware of some things. Such as the fact that he can’t keep lying to Cole like he does with the kids, especially if he’s gonna leave, especially if this is the last time he’s ever gonna see him.

“… But I do need you.”

The hand tugging at his feels like a dream at first. The dream of the lost. Another lie. But then he looks up, ears red with shame and fear, and what he sees is a smile on Cole’s face. And his hand holding his like he’s something precious and delicate that he wants to be fused to. And his eyes staring into his like he’s something… something beautiful, like he’s the most beautiful thing in all of this land and any of the others, and Geo’s eyes well up with tears, because Cole does not lie.

Cole does not lie.

Cole does not lie.

Cole does not lie, that’s what he keeps telling himself as he watches him pack his bags, later, inside the Rookery, after everything has settled and his teammates have gone. He stares, and doesn’t dare to help him, fearing that he’s gonna fuse anything that he comes across together.

“I will be back,” Cole says, for the third or fourth time so far, and he looks like he’s pained by the taste of his own words. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you here, and that’s a promise. I swear I will come back to you. I said I wouldn’t abandon you, and, and now…”

“It’s important,” Geo catches him before he starts rambling. “I understand. So do the kids.”

(They’ve all been forgotten before.)

(And it hurts him too, but he knows how to deal with that as well.)

Cole looks at him like he wants to cry for a second there, or like he wants to hug him, and Geo takes a step back, because otherwise it’ll be the two of them, and Cole’s never gonna leave this place. See, honesty. Right there.

Suddenly, Cole’s bag drops to his feet. It’s not too heavy, and he hasn’t kept many belongings in the Land of Lost Things, but the ones that he does, he’s taking them all with him. The pictures and the keychains and everything that reminds him of them. That’s how you know it, Geo tells himself. That’s how you know he means it.

“I hate this,” Cole says, and Geo can only stare back at him, helpless. He hates it as well.

“I’m not sure what I should say to you,” he says after a moment of silence.

He knows what he wants to say. He thinks, he hopes, that he knows what Cole wants to hear. But if that happens, then he’s never leaving this room.

“I don’t want you to go, but… but I understand that you have to. And I will take good care of the Finders while you’re gone. And without the Hoarder, we’ll be…” He stops. Silence again. Cole is watching him, expectantly. Fine without you, he was gonna say, but he promised himself he wouldn’t lie to Cole again. How could he bring himself to say such a thing? He breathes. No better words come to him.

Suddenly, Cole goes for it. He takes him in like he’s gonna tackle him but doesn’t, instead just wrapping him in a hug so tight that Geo almost falls to the ground. He stays still, unsure, his arms hanging by the sides. I don’t want you to go, he thinks, and those seem like better words. I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to go. It’s the truth, so maybe that’s why it’s so hard to say.

“You don’t have to use your powers to get me to stay,” Cole whispers, close to his ear. “You don’t have to be useful or stick our hands together. You don’t have to do absolutely anything.”

His voice is tight, and he doesn’t  let go for a couple more seconds. Geo tentatively hugs him back, resting his hands on his lower back, gently supporting him, keeping him in one place. He feels both of their bodies as they inhale and exhale, and feels himself grow more relaxed.

“I love you,” Cole says then.

Geo stops breathing.

He thinks they both do.

“You…”

Cole wraps him closer. His heart is breathing against Geo’s. His heartbeat next to his, so desperately calm.

Then he pulls apart, only for a second, holds him by the shoulders. Looks down. That’s where Geo’s lips are. And maybe, just maybe, Geo is thinking now that he isn’t this disgusting, selfish thing they made him out to be, because this is the first time in his life that he can remember taking something from himself when faced with such a sight.

He leans in, closer to Cole, and kisses him. And he can feel Cole’s hands on the back of his head, pulling him closer, toying with the earring on his left ear. Kissing him back. Once or twice or however many times it takes.

“I will be back,” Cole says in a low voice.

“I believe you,” Geo whispers right back.

Because Cole wouldn’t lie to him.

The monastery feels a bit like the dungeons, in a way.

After a lifetime of living in a wasteland of junk, hiding in the trash and taking shelter under walls of tin, that’s how it feels to have a stable, concrete roof over one’s head. There’s also the amount of people, which just seems to keep growing every day with the next world-threatening disaster (Geo and his Finders are clearly not the first new arrivals, and they won’t be the last). There’s the constant presence of chatter and arguing, all of it tainted with the underlying tension of what’s happening outside, what they’re doing to the people. And Geo’s used to all of that, used to living in tiny spaces that barely fit its occupants, but this place is starting to feel smaller than any.

Of course, no one’s been anything but kind to him. Things have gone a long way since the dungeons. There’s honestly no reason for him to keep fearing that things will go wrong… except for the fact that the world keeps threatening to collapse every other Thursday, but as Cole would say, what’s new.

Geo still finds the most comfort by the training yard rather than inside the monastery. It’s the one place where he can feel the air as if it’s something for him to breathe, and the walls, rather than add to the sense of being trapped, make him feel like he’s safe, for once. It’s better than being inside with the kids, where he has to hold back every wince forming on his face when he makes a wrong move, and better than sleeping on an actual bed that he’ll never get used to instead of a worn, forgotten mattress. Better than watching the Finders as they sleep and making sure that they’re actually breathing, and not pale and empty and hollow.

He hears a door closing by the hallway and someone’s delicate steps walking up in his direction. He shifts from where he’s sitting, and for a second, his weight falls on his left leg, making it scream in pain. Geo holds it as if he could fuse broken pieces of it together, stop it from aching, but he has to bite his lip so as not to yell when he hears Cole coming outside.

“Alright! Kids are off to bed now. You don’t know how hard it was to get them there. The boys insisted I told them the whole Aspheera story before they fell asleep.” He sits beside Geo, his weight pressing against his, all smiling and rambling like he’s talking to himself, and Geo’s pleased to see he doesn’t seem to have realized the tension in his muscles. “I said they might be getting too old for bedtime stories, but they said they didn’t mind. Which, fine by me. I guess they were just tired now. Bonzle just wanted to go to sleep.”

Geo leans back against the pillar behind him, trying to relax his body enough to ease some of the pain. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. I don’t think she’s suffering the after effects of the hollowing or anything. I think she just wanted to be there with the boys.” There’s a beat of silence. “Besides,” Cole adds, “sleep’s always nice, even when you don’t need it.”

His face changes for a second there, and it shouldn’t mean anything. He’s told Geo about his time as a ghost and all the things you learn to appreciate after an experience like that. But now, it reminds Geo of how he looked just a few days ago. Sickly and pale and blue, his eyes glassy and unfocused but remaining wide open, his head dropped to the side as if it was too heavy for his body. It made him seem like a corpse.

Geo doesn’t realize that he’s squeezing at his hand until Cole remembers to blink and finds him staring. He gives him a compassionate look and a weak smile and squeezes his hand right back.

“How’s the leg?”

Geo refuses to look down. “It’s fine,” he lies through his teeth. “It hurt a bit in the afternoon, but it’s better now. It all passes after a while.”

Cole doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer. “If it starts bothering you, I could get Mr. Frohicky to look through the medicine cabinet again. Or I could give you some tea for the pain, I know where Wu kept the good stuff—”

“I said it’s fine, Cole,” Geo insists, teasing, but just to make it more convincing. “I’ve been resting and taking the meds and I have you,” he adds pointedly with a grin, “taking good care of me. It’ll be alright. It’s all healing well.”

“You took a big beating,” Cole says. He suddenly looks very serious. “Those kinds of things don’t just go away on the next day.”

Very serious and very upset. Almost as bad as he looked right before he left with Kai and Frak, leaving Geo to watch over the kids by himself until he got back. Geo reaches for his hand and holds it tightly. He remembers Cole said something about that, hand holding, and about being a ghost.

“Babe, I promise. It doesn’t hurt.”

Cole only sighs in response. He caresses Geo’s hand with his thumb and lies back against him, resting his head on his shoulder. Geo inhales sharply when the weight falls on his left side, but he makes an effort to focus on anything else that’s happening. Cole’s heartbeat. Cole’s warmth. The most peaceful night he’s ever witnessed, and the two of them in the middle of it.

“You know,” Cole whispers against the crook of his neck, “your ears turn red when you lie.”

Geo’s head jerks up.

“What?”

Cole continues to stare into nothingness, as if he didn’t say anything just now.

“No, they don’t.” Geo frowns. “Of course they don’t. How would you even be able to tell? You’re not… You can barely tell red apart from…” He takes his hands up and covers his ears. “They do?”

A smirk tugs at the edge of Cole’s mouth.

“It’s hard to notice, with the purple.” He closes his eyes, nudging Geo’s face with his head. “But I can feel them now, burning.”

Yes, okay, Geo’s definitely blushing right now. And he knew that happened when he was with Cole, and it has happened a good amount of times, but this is different.

“The kids would’ve told me,” he insists, looking away.

“I don’t think they’ve noticed. Either that, or they’re just playing along whenever you tell them things because they love you so much.”

He rests his hand on Geo’s knee and he still tries to keep the hissing to a minimum, despite the fact that he’s clearly not fooling anyone by this point. If he ever has.

“And you couldn’t do that as well, could you?”

Cole snickers. “Hey, they don’t play along with everything you say just because they love you.” He lifts his hand and starts stroking right next to Geo’s chin, nearly touching his lower lip. “And you don’t blush only when you lie.”

Geo leans into the warmth of his touch and tries to turn all of his attention towards that. Towards the feeling of something holding him and touching him and someone worrying about him. He tries to focus on that and not the throbbing pain in his muscles.

“When did you realize?”

“First time I met you. You’re not exactly word-class liar, either. And you get flustered real easily,” Cole adds with a grin.

“Come on,” Geo huffs.

“You actually look so cute when you do that.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Gladly,” Cole says, and he leans in to kiss Geo on the lips. Geo’s whole face catches fire in that moment, and Cole’s right: sometimes, it has nothing to do with lying. He might’ve thought so, a couple of years ago, when he struggled to believe someone would stay if they weren’t trapped in the same place as him. But he knows better now. Cole’s taught him better. Cole should be proud of both of them.

He kisses him back. And back. And again and again and again. He wouldn’t mind bursting into flames right now, if only it meant the two of them would get to stay here forever and be okay.

Until suddenly, Cole pulls them apart. “Actually, no. I’m gonna get you some painkillers.”

He gets up. His hand is still holding Geo’s a little too tight, and Geo presses his lips. “You don’t have to—”

“Yes,” Cole replies, bluntly. “I do.”

He’s not smiling anymore.

Geo could lie to him again. He could cover his ears and pretend it actually doesn’t hurt. But world-class liar or not, there’s no way he’ll ever convince anyone that Cole is okay. He knows that look. He’s spent the last few years sleeping beside him and waking him up whenever he started to scream in the middle of the night, plagued with nightmares involving the loss of himself or his friends.

Geo just never expected to be the cause of any of those nightmares.

“Babe…”

He caresses Cole’s hand and again and pulls him a little bit closer.

“I am okay,” he says.

Cole reaches out to touch him. He rubs him behind the ear. “Try again.”

Geo sighs.

“It doesn’t hurt as much as before,” and he doesn’t grit his teeth this time.

Cole bites his lip. He’s got that look on his face, like he does when he wants to punch someone. “Not good enough,” he declares, finally. He stands up and walks back into the monastery. Geo can hear him turning lights on and rummaging through cabinets as he searches for the damn painkillers. “Not for me,” he calls out. “Not for my boyfriend.”

Geo winces, this time not because of the pain, but due to the loud volume of Cole’s voice. He feels more conscious about every other presence in this house, and he doesn’t want to wake up the kids sleeping in Cole’s bed. So, he waits until Cole’s back out with a box of pills and sitting in front of him within earshot to decide to talk again.

“It wasn’t your fault that I got hurt.”

He looks right into Cole’s eyes. They’re dark. They’re beautiful. They’re filled with a guilt that doesn’t belong there, not on Geo’s boyfriend. Geo takes the box of pills out of his hands and holds them both, lifting them to put them by the sides of his head, where his ears are. He rests them there, letting them feel the red, and the lack of it.

They stay like that, in complete silence, for a few seconds. Then, Cole sighs.

“Okay, but just because you’re convinced it’s the truth, it doesn’t mean—”

Geo shuts him up with a kiss. A quick peck on the mouth, but Cole’s face transforms nevertheless. So he kisses them again on the cheek, delicate and gentle. Like he’s something precious.

“Okay,” Cole breathes. And he kisses him back. “Okay,” and again.

His face changes every time, even after all these years. And Geo’s face still blushes, now and forever, because this seems to be it.

“I love you,” he says between kisses. And just so that it’s clear, because all of him is burning now underneath his skin, “There’s a truth.”

“Nice.” Cole smiles against his lips. “Now, take the damn ibuprofen.”