#Perry is Gus' dad in case anyone's confused

[anguigenus]

More Cursed Gus AU

For other posts about this AU 

Details about the immediate aftermath of the curse and how Gus communicates:

When Gus finally gets home after the election, he hasn’t realized that the curse works through his words. When his dad gets home, he starts to explain what happened, but stops when he sees the look on Perry’s face.

Because of the curse, Perry hears Gus telling him that he’s a horrible father, and that he should’ve died instead of Mrs. Porter. (For the purposes of this AU, Mr. Porter is a single father, tragically widowed when his wife fell ill a few years ago.)

Keep in mind that for Perry, Gus just limped in the door. He’s dirty and disheveled from being chased through the woods, probably bruised and a bit bloodied in some places, and now he’s saying that he hates Perry. Yeah. It hurts.

Perry breaks down and starts to cry.

Gus realizes then that something is changing his words, and making it so that they hurt others. That’s when he vows to never speak again. Instead, he uses illusion magic to write in the air, and explain the situation.

Over the next week or two, Perry brings Gus to a few different healers. They’re able to figure out the curse is coming from the ring, but they can’t remove the ring, and the curse is too powerful for them to do anything to help.

Initially, Gus only communicates with his illusions, but it’s tiring to constantly cast illusions whenever he wants to talk. In addition, it depends a lot on how fast the person he’s talking to can read, and they have to tell him when they’re done reading somehow.

As a result, he doesn’t really ‘talk’ unless he has to. He gets really lonely, since he was used to having a bunch of friends to talk to, both in his old school and before the curse.

He sits with Willow at lunch. Although her first few attempts at conversation fail, Willow can see how sad he is, and the glances he occasionally shoots at his old friends. She finally succeeds in starting a conversation by writing what she wants to say on a piece of paper and sliding it to him. Since they’re both writing, it feels more equal, more normal to him.

In his spare time, Perry researches ways to help Gus. He comes across a language used by a small colony of demons in the foot of the isle that relies solely on hand signs and facial expressions instead of words.

He and Gus learn it so they can talk easier at home, and then Gus teaches it to Willow. He still has to use illusion writing to talk to other people, but now he can communicate with Perry and Willow a lot easier.