Tiffany felt a sinking in her gut as her denial finally snapped and realization broke in upon her. She had lost. She was changing...changed? First the one change had been taken from her, then another, a more freakish transformation, had bested her, despite all her determination to make it turn back, leave her untouched...
She drew a heaving breath and stared into space, trying to fathom this. She had...she had been defeated, twice now...
The change was progressing slowly, as a change crept over her hair, turning pale white. Her skin, too, was changing to a paler color - though it didn't look sickly-pallid. In the dim-ish light of the hallway, the two adults could just see a pale glow she began to radiate - sharp and cool like moonlight, though not so bright.
While this had been going on, the bodily change the corruption had brought was being purged. Tiffany shrank back down from a sick parody of a young woman to an actual pretty girl - still shapely, as she had been, but with human flaws to the formerly too-perfect shapes, proportions brought back to something like they ought to be. The effect was surprising. Robbed of the attitude brought by the darkness, Tiffany in her exaggerated form had looked awkward and pathetic, like a plastic surgery patient gone all wrong. But returned to her proper shape, even in her traumatized state, she looked poised and assured again.
She blinked, and her eyes had changed. The life had returned to them; they were still the same deep blue they had been before, yet more liquid, more piercing. She looked to her father, simply gazing at him, yet he could see the same question in her face: why? She had lost now, it was over, but still...she had to know...
He sighed, wishing with everything he had that he could take things back, back to before the darkness had taken her, find some way to make it not have happened so that this wouldn't have been necessary...
"I-I'm s-sorry, honey," he said. "I...I spoke with your teacher, and she explained...if we had left it in you, it would consume you completely...you would have been gone forever, Tiffany. I couldn't let that happen to you...I know it must have hurt, I know you were scared, but I couldn't let that thing erase you..."
She frowned. "That thing?" How could he talk about it that way!? The part of her that had done so much...brought her to a zenith in which she was the fullest expression of herself? She had come so far from...from...it all rang so hollow now. She wanted...she wanted that feeling of power again, she felt empty without it, but...her thoughts returned to that awful dream...and it hadn't been the only nightmare she'd had recently, either. Was it really...was it really as bad as they said it was?
And what would happen now? She was changed into a freak now, like everybody else...and more than that, she felt naked and vulnerable, like a wall inside her that protected her had been torn down...stripped of her defense, of her power, of her humanity...would she just...huddle in the corner? Hide away?
No. NO. She was not a weakling. She would not let herself be. Even if she had lost this fight, she would not just sit aside like some frail little mouse of a girl. Set back, perhaps, but she would not be defeated.
Tiffany sat up and found, to her surprise, that her clothes had changed as well. She was wearing loose robes, which were diaphanous, not transparent enough to be revealing, but enough that her light filtered through them. Elegant golden trim decorated the fabric. She made to get up, but her father was already standing, and offered her a hand.
She balked. He had...he had called this woman here, to do this to her, because he was scared...all that had happened tonight was by his doing. She wanted to turn and storm off, to let him ache in rejection for his betrayal...but she could remember...the only thing she could remember after she'd blacked out, the feel of his hand on hers, the anchor she'd grabbed onto, afraid of slipping away forever...
...but also the inroad for the deep reaction that had weakened her defenses and allowed the woman in, to take it all away from her. Who could...who could she trust now? She didn't know, but...it had felt good just to have contact again. She took his hand, and he lifted her to her feet.
She looked around, then down at herself, seeing the white hair hanging into her field of view, the transformed clothes, the pale, mildly luminescent skin. Then upwards - the horn that had broken through the skin on her forehead was just low enough and at such an angle that she could see the bottom of it, if she turned her eyes upwards. (Though it took her a minute to realize that craning her neck wouldn't make a difference in seeing something attached to her head.)
"W-what am I...?" she whispered.
Her teacher shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "Nothing that I've heard of...perhaps one of the many new things the sun is bringing forth..." She'd wondered momentarily when she saw the horn, but it was clear now that Tiffany was nothing like what she herself had become. And thank heaven for that...it was frightening enough to be a grown woman with that kind of power; if it were in the hands of a defensive, reactionary teenager...? She shuddered to think.
Tiffany wandered off towards the bathroom, not saying another word; but it seemed to be more out of confusion than spite. Mr. Saunders turned to the woman who'd just saved his daughter. "What will happen to her?" he asked. "Will she be all right?"
She shrugged again. "The corruption won't return," she said. "With its influence gone, her spirit will build up a defense against it even if she did encounter something like it. But as for what happens to Tiffany? I don't know for sure. She's a fighter still...that could be a big help in the process of recovery. On the other hand, it could also mean she'll push back that much more strongly against any attempts to help her adjust to this."
"What can I do?" he asked. He would help his daughter through this - he had to.
"Difficult to say for sure," she said, as she made her way down to the front door. "Be there for her, obviously - but don't push. I think she's still feeling vulnerable, and no wonder; if you try too hard to force yourself into her problems, she might react negatively. As for life in general...I'm no psychologist, but we do have a good counselor on staff, and I think it would be good for Tiffany to talk with her."
She sighed. "I am sure, though, that one thing she needs is...some real friends. She's vulnerable, able to be hurt, and she won't want to trust herself to anyone...but it's vital that she does. If she just walls herself off again, that only puts her right back where she was before all this. And if she were to get involved in student council, or some other organizational affair...something that can give her an outlet for her abilities, but with less emphasis on dominance and control and more on real leadership..."
Tiffany's father nodded. "I'll...try to figure out how to encourage her towards those..."
She nodded. "Don't push her too hard, but don't be afraid to push her if you have to. I saw a lot in her being that suggests isolationism...and don't feel obligated to put her back in school right away, if she's not ready for it. We'll understand."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you for everything..."
She nodded. "I'm just glad she's all right...we got lucky with this, in so many ways..."
