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Even though it's been over a year of this nightmare, coping hasn't gotten any easier yet. Gus still misses his ruined future with illusions, and he still resents the life of abominations he's been forced into.
He wishes he could scrub the sigil off of his arm, rub it away under a sink like one of those temporary tattoos Luz showed him in the Human Realm, but all that does is make his skin sting. Gus's body isn't equipped to handle boiling water in the way Hunter's is, but even that can't burn away his problems.
Despite everything else Gus has been through, the day he was given an abomination sigil by the head of his former coven is still the most traumatic experience he's had. It's a symbol of his limited life and the dark past of the old Boiling Isles.
Sometimes he tells himself he shouldn't be so dramatic about it, because at least he can still naturally use some type of magic. He tends to compare himself to some of his closest friends; Luz can only use glyphs, and Hunter's arm is marked by an Emperor's Coven sigil with a lifetime of abuse behind it. Gus's life can't be as bad, because there should still be some way for him to find a future for himself…even if it's not the one he wants at all.
That doesn't make it hurt any less, though. He knows Willow has been through years of the wrong track, the same one as his, but her advice isn't much help because he can't even do illusions in secret. He may have some kind of magic, sure, but it's limited enough to make him feel utterly powerless most days.
Compared to Amity, Gus is like a completely useless child whenever he tries to use abominations. He knows it isn't fair to put himself against a top student who's spent her whole life in this track, but it's hard not to when he sees every single day.
He's not in many classes with her; going from being an advanced prodigy in the illusions course to attending extra classes for struggling students in the abomination one has been a depressing shift. He hated the way people took advantage of him for his past skills, but he hates the frustrating looks of pity his friends give him for his newer problem even more.
There are good intentions behind every act of kindness and support, but they make a steadily growing knot of anger twist up deep in Gus’s stomach. His friends just can’t understand the specific type of pain his body goes through now, and lagging behind the rest of them while they thrive is like torture. Trying and failing to keep up with them is even worse.
Making the best of a bad situation is hard to do when it’s a permanent one that has no solution.
On the days where he wants to just lie in bed and sleep through his classes even more than usual, Amity shows up to drag him out of his funk without even meaning to. Her job in the Bonesborough Library makes it a terrible place for Gus to study, because he’s almost certain to encounter her. The two have been friends for long enough that this shouldn’t feel so scary, but he still flinches whenever she sits down to tutor him in abominations.
Willow really hasn’t been kidding all the times she’s vented to Gus about Amity’s bad habits. She’s a good teacher in regards to the technical side of things, but she definitely struggles to understand other people. They’re close, teens bonded for life through their shared experiences ever since the Day of Unity, but they seem like strangers whenever they discuss their shared track that only one of them has a real passion for.
Gus’s grades are worse than they’ve ever been, and fixing them is a hopeless idea when he spends so much of his time stuck at home feeling depressed. He can’t bear to go to his classes and be surrounded by countless students who are nothing like him, along with constant reminders of his own limited capabilities. He’s so behind that the thought of even showing up is humiliating; he skips classes more than he attends them.
His teachers know about his… situation. They don’t like to call it what it is, because it’s too rude to point it out. Being so miserable at a young age isn’t something most people are familiar with, because the average high schooler doesn’t even have a sigil. Now that the former emperor has been out of power for a long time, students are no longer given them; their only true purpose was to cause pain, after all.
Gus knows the Draining Spell isn’t a thing anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from remembering how much his whole body hurt on the Day of Unity thanks to his sigil. Whether or not these might have long-term side effects remains to be seen, and the unknown is terrifying. Spending the rest of his life with that constant worry looming behind him is something he stubbornly refuses to get used to.
Getting help makes his problem too real, so pushing through it and ignoring it as much as he can tends to be his first response. His restricted magic physically doesn’t allow him to make the illusions he wants to, and his pathetic little attempts at rejecting this reality never accomplish anything.
He’s forced to confront the issues he normally pushes down whenever Amity makes a wrong move. She pries about his condition a little too much. Compliments his objectively terrible abominations too much. Tries to support him too much.
After Amity says something about his sigil on a particularly bad day, Gus finally explodes at her. The anger towards her that he’s held back since Willow started forgiving her bubbles up to the surface, and he’s sure his vision would go blue from the stress if he still had illusion magic in this moment.
“Maybe this is easy for you, but it’s not for me, and I wish you’d quit acting like it should be!”
His face burns with embarrassment when other students at the library turn towards his loud outburst, but he doesn’t sink down in shame. The abomination Amity was constructing for him as an example falls apart thanks to her surprise, and she stares at him with wide eyes.
“…We should take a break.”
******
With wet eyes, Gus chews on the chips Amity bought him and avoids her gaze from his spot on the floor. They’ve moved to a quieter part of the library, a little corner by a vending machine far from any other people, and they sit across from each other with an invisible wall of tension dividing them. It’s an illusion cast by the cracked foundation of their friendship instead of any magic.
“I’m sorry for pushing too much,” Amity tells him, her voice quiet and nervous. “I know that I’m never going to understand what you’re going through, but if there’s anything I can do for you, I want to try. You don’t have to let me in, but if you want to, I’ll be here for you.”
His bond with Amity has always been the most strained one he has in their friend group. It’s never been easy to look past the years he spent being a shoulder for Willow to cry on, even though the two girls get along much better now. Amity is socially clumsy and she lacks experience in genuinely connecting with other people. She tends to be rude without meaning to, and she can be overbearing.
But she’s also still here with him, sticking by his side as tears roll down his cheeks, and that counts for something too.
“It’s not your fault. I get overwhelmed sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I should take it out on you,” he says. She looks at him like he’s just said something entirely nonsensical, and she holds herself back from reaching a hand out to him.
“You don’t have to apologize for being in pain, Gus. It’s okay to let yourself feel hurt. Anyone would be upset in your position.”
Being told something like that hits his heart in a way few other attempts at comforting him have before. Letting himself feel what his body needs to feel is contradictory to his desperate desire to have control over himself. That’s a habit he formed ever since he got his sigil, as a way of balancing out the one moment he wasn’t able to have agency over himself. But total self-control doesn’t just protect him: it also limits his freedom — and his emotions.
Gus’s quiet tears escalate into a choked sob, and he rushes to rub his eyes.
“I’m just so tired of all of this,” he admits. “Nobody looks at me the same way they used to anymore, and all my plans for the future got totally ruined. It’s not fair!”
“It’s not your fault,” Amity tells him. Gus just flinches from her failed attempt at reassurance.
“That’s the worst part!” he protests. His voice rises, and he shakes as he speaks. “None of it is my fault, but it happened to me anyways! There’s no meaning behind my pain at all!”
Amity watches him, her hands buried in her black skirt, and she frowns with sympathy. “You know, you sound a lot like Willow right now,” she says. “Back when we were in abomination classes together, she was always saying that kind of thing. She felt like the whole world was against her…like I was against her. And I guess I kind of was.”
Willow’s past is a tense topic between both of them, considering that the duo are her former best friend and her current one, which means that it must be getting mentioned for an important reason.
Gus picks up his chips again and bites into another one to settle his nerves; he listens to Amity intently, staring at her with a look of suspicion that he reserves for people who have hurt Willow before, and he lets her keep talking.
“She felt like her whole world was over…like she was hurting for no reason. I…had the same feeling about my own life until I met Luz. I was ready to give up on thinking the world could be a kind place…and I was ready to give up on myself too,” she explains. “Finding the person who gave me some kind of spark back was what it took for me to come to terms with my circumstances. Maybe you need to find something similar for yourself. You just need to keep your eyes — and your heart — open so you’ll be able to see it when it comes to you someday.”
Pieces begin to click in Gus’s brain. The dim glow of the vending machine seems to sparkle against the tile flooring, and his fingers tremble less against the torn material of the chip bag. Amity has a point, even if it may not be one that he’s ready to accept yet.
“So you think there’s still a chance for me?” he asks her. “A chance for things to get better? You can’t know that for sure. Nobody can, not even someone from the Oracle Coven. You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
Amity’s frown shifts into a small smile, and she presses a hand onto one of his. She faces him with a very particular type of gentle warmth — the kind of affection formed between people who have faced both their worst and best moments together. Normally she’s more like the moon, but right now, she seems to resemble the sunshine of her girlfriend.
Luz really has been a strong influence on all of them.
“Of course I’m being honest. You’re Gus Porter, Hexside’s youngest top student and the witch who saved us all from getting sigils,” Amity insists. “You shouldn’t have had to make that sacrifice for us, but you don’t need to keep trying to make up for something that you didn’t cause. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Just doing what you can every day is enough, even if it doesn’t feel like it is yet. It’ll add up into something bigger eventually.”
He chews slowly, pondering her words with a lighter weight on his shoulders.
“I…guess it couldn’t hurt to try some more.”
Then, Amity puts her purse on her lap and opens it. It’s black with golden stars on it, the same astrological symbol she used to wear with pride on her chest. She digs through piles of cat hair and makeup bottles before she finds the little jar she’s been searching for.
It’s the small kind they use in their classes, one of the many tools from the equipment they get for their assignments. It’s half-filled with untouched abomination goo, and it sort of resembles the slime toys Luz introduced them to back in the Human Realm.
Amity carries plenty of abomination materials with her everywhere she goes, but Gus tends to leave all of his in his locker. As he learned from a younger version of Willow, sometimes problems are able to be kept out of mind as long as they’re left out of sight. This…isn’t that type of issue, however.
Amity hands the jar to Gus and gives him an encouraging smile.
“Try to make me something,” she requests. “Give it your best shot. Don’t overthink it. Just do what you can.”
Gus stares blankly at her, puzzled, but accepts the sudden homework. He untwists the lid, not sure what to expect, and places it onto the ground. With weak hands and a determined heart, he’s able to form the goo into a little abomination. It stands up straight and walks sort of robotically, like it’s a miniature toy soldier version of the bigger machines the Blight family creates.
“I think this is all I’ve got in me right now,” he admits sheepishly. “It’s…one of those days.”
Instead of lecturing him, though, his current teacher claps and cheers him on.
“That was amazing, Gus!”
He stares at her, baffled, and scoffs a bit.
“I’ve already told you that I don’t like being pitied,” he reminds her.
Amity places her hand on the ground and motions for the abomination to walk towards her. It obeys and crawls onto her palm, and she lifts her hand up in front of her face. Then, in a moment that makes her status as a member of the Blight family exceedingly obvious, she enthusiastically nuzzles the little creature against her cheek as if it’s some type of cute animal. The goo spreads all over the side of her face, but she pays it no mind.
“I’m being serious!” she tells him. “Just look at this little guy! You created life! Isn’t that incredible, even if it’s only a simple one? There’s no other coven that can do stuff like this.”
Watching his abomination paw at Amity makes something finally click for Gus.
“...I’ve never thought about it like that before. You’re right.”
Illusions will always be his first love, but that doesn’t mean that he needs to entirely close himself off from other possibilities either. There are opportunities to do truly magical things in any coven. A former member of the most widely mocked coven is all too familiar with that fact.
“A couple months ago, you couldn’t even make an abomination wave a hand at me. But now you can make ones that are able to ruin my hair for the rest of the day,” Amity continues. She giggles as she bats the abomination’s small goopy limbs away from her braids. “You’ve been making progress without even realizing it. You won’t know where you’ll be after a few more months of trying if you don’t let yourself have the chance.”
She sets the abomination back down on the floor, and it wanders over to its creator. Gus watches it like a new parent, and his heart flutters with pride. He’s made progress. He’s achieved things he didn’t think he could. He’s kept finding ways to survive — so maybe now is the time to start searching for a way to truly live again, too.
The abomination settles down on his lap, crawling onto his legs to lean against his shirt. With some hesitation, Gus extends a gentle hand to rub its head. His tense muscles soften when it makes a delighted noise in response to his touch, and he smiles back up at Amity.
“...Thanks. I’ll try to approach it differently next time,” he says. “You’re a good teacher…Professor Blight.”
Gus picks his opened bag of chips back up from the floor. After taking one out for himself, he points the bag in Amity’s direction. She accepts the offer and grins at him.
“Only because I’ve got a future top student in my class!”
The two friends laugh as they share their snack; they plan their next lesson together with open minds and sticky purple hands.