Dejectedly, Tim stuffed his phone back in his pocket and stared up at the iridescent Sun, wondering when it was going to finally change; when she would no longer be she, no longer be the Jon that he knew...that he had these feelings for...and be someone else instead. Some guy. Would...would he even be able to look at that Jon? Would she...would he even want to see Tim? What could they even say to each other? He'd thought everything had made so much sense, he'd thought it could really work, that they could be happy together, and then...then it'd all fallen apart, and now...and now...now he was probably going to break down and cry. He turned and ran back to the car, where his dad was waiting, and promptly started unloading on the man-turned-water-nymph.
When he'd finished, she gently patted him on the back, then sat him up straight and put her hands on his shoulders. "Listen, son," she said. "I know this is rough for you, and this probably isn't what you want to hear right now, but...did you even stop to think how she felt about any of this?"
Tim bit his lip. "What...whad'you mean?" he said. "I...I thought she...thought she felt the same way...I mean, she seemed to enjoy being with me, and...sometimes she'd give me this look...it all seemed like it made so much sense..."
His father nodded. "But you never actually asked her what she thought about it, did you?" she said. "You waited to spring this whole scenario, this big question, on her until the last minute..."
He felt a little incensed. "But...but I did ask!" he protested. "She just...she acted like she hadn't even known I liked her until I asked her to stay...I thought they were supposed to be the ones who could pick up on this kind of stuff! But she acted like I was being a jerk just for asking..."
"You didn't ask her how she felt, Tim," she said. "You asked her to do what you wanted her to do. I think it's understandable that she could misread that. And kid, let me tell you something: to whatever extent she is a woman, women aren't psychic, no matter what people think. They don't have Counselor Troi powers. Even when you've been together as long as your mom and I, I still have to let her know how I'm feeling sometimes. She had no way of knowing you liked her unless you told her. Maybe you gave some external cues, but if those failed to get through, you can't act like you didn't have a much more direct and clear method of communication open to you. You could've just told her."
He could have; he had to admit that that was true, and that he'd pretty much known it. It was just that...well, he couldn't, no matter how obvious the suggestion sounded now. "But...but if I did that," he said, "she...she..."
"She could've said no," his dad said. He nodded glumly. "But what happened was worse, wasn't it?" she continued. "Instead of a simple 'no,' she freaked out at having this whole thing sprung on her and ran off. Even if she hadn't, don't you think it would've seemed kind of disrespectful to expect her to shoulder the burden of communication you weren't picking up?"
"I...I guess," Tim said. "It's just...it's not fair...it could've been so great, we could've been happy together, I know it, but it just...it just fell apart...it isn't fair, Dad! God, I wish I could just go back and...and..."
"And do it better," she said. "But Tim, whatever happens, doing it better requires understanding where you went wrong. Think about it for a minute - think about how she must have felt. She's spent six months in an unfamiliar body, finding herself transplanted into 'the other side' of pretty much any social interaction, and she's had to bear the responsibility of this whole Sun thing on top of that...and then when she was right about to make the second biggest call of her life, she learned, as far as she knew out of nowhere, that a friendship she'd built was different than she thought it was, and that you'd been assuming she just knew that, and that her failure to notice it equalled some kind of consent-by-silence on her part. Don't you think it's understandable why she'd be upset by that?"
Tim stared at her, biting his lip. "I...I didn't mean that!" he protested. He hadn't, really! It was just...how could she not have known? By all appearances she enjoyed spending time with him as much as he did with her; wouldn't that logically mean that she reciprocated his feelings? His father nodded. "You didn't," she said. "I know you better than that, son. But it probably looked that way to her, because she didn't have any way to know what you did mean if you weren't telling her."
The drow-boy sighed, hanging his head. "I...okay. But...what can I even do about it now? It's...she's gone, she's going to change the Sun back, and then...then..." He couldn't even finish that thought, and just trailed off. His father put a hand on his shoulder. "I don't know, Tim," she said. "There might not be much you can do - but whatever there is, you're going to have to talk to her - or him, whichever - to have any idea."
"I...don't know if I can talk to...to him," Tim said. The idea of facing some...some guy who'd taken away - erased - the girl he liked... He knew that was an unreasonable way to look at it, but it was hard for him to conceive of it any other way - he hadn't even known Jon before she was...well, a she - but...actually, what if it wasn't just some guy to him? What if he was recognizably Jon? And Tim would have to look him in the eye and try to reconcile the two and see her in there and be unable to feel the same way about her because she wasn't her anymore...God, wouldn't that be worse? How could he face this?
"Well, you're going to have to," his dad said. "To apologize, if nothing else. At the very least, you owe her that much."
Tim felt his stomach knot up. The last thing he wanted to do was face someone who...who was Jon but wasn't Jon right now...but...his dad was right. If...if he'd been thoughtless and offended her by not really taking her feelings into account, then...then he did owe her an apology...even if...if she wasn't the person he knew and loved anymore...
But God was it gut-wrenching to think about! This, and the uncertainty, and the crushing, deflating feeling of failure when she not only didn't return his feelings, but ran off when he tried to talk to her...everything that had happened this morning when he'd had such hopes for it...he slumped into his dad's watery chest. She wrapped her arms around him. "It's hard, Tim," she said. "It's hard, but it'll be okay. You'll get through this."
While she was holding him, there was a sudden shift in the light. From its slowly-shifting soap-bubble colors, it stabilized on a yellow that was simultaneously familiar from aeons of history and surprisingly novel from six months of constantly-shifting lighting. Tim barely noticed, but he definitely caught on when the surface of the water-nymph who was his father began to solidify under his touch, first reaching the soft-but-solid consistency of her most humanlike form, then becoming ordinary human skin with muscle underneath, which got a little rougher to the touch as the muscle began to firm up a bit. Tim blinked in surprise and pulled away to see a fully human figure whose female characteristics were already fading away into the shape of a man he hadn't seen as such in close to half a year. Beard and all, every detail of the dad he'd grown up with was restored.
His father shook his head in bewilderment, holding up a hand to inspect it. "I...wow," he said, in his old familiar voice. "Wow. I'd almost forgotten what all this felt like. I, uh..." He trailed off, glancing down to notice that he was still naked. "Uh, son," he said, "could you do me a favor and get the emergency blanket out of the trunk?"
It was mid-afternoon. Karyn had driven Jon home from the meeting, as she was still pretty shaken. Nothing much had seemed to change with the rest of the circle; Haru and Ken had retained their changed forms just as Lilly had. Brittany hadn't changed overall, but she was a fully corporeal, flesh-and-blood human being again, which she clearly greatly appreciated. Lucas, of course, hadn't changed at all, as she'd carefully specified, and while she eyed Jon with some concern, she kept her distance, which was about as much tact as could be expected from her. But really, Jon had been too caught-up in the enormity of her own situation to think much about any of this; even spotting the woman who she now recognized as the Woman standing with Lilly wasn't enough to keep her from going straight home and collapsing on her bed.
Karyn, true friend that she was, had stayed there for a good while, talking things over with her, reassuring and comforting her. It was still such a mind-boggling thing to think that she might be spending the rest of her life like this, and moreso to think that she might be better to spend the rest of her life like this... And there was all the pent-up emotion from earlier in the morning to deal with, too...part of her was still mad at Tim for acting the way he had, but...well, the Woman had been right. She had jumped to a lot of conclusions about what he'd meant, and then she'd yelled at him and stormed off without bothering to confirm...as upset as she was, she did feel bad about that...
...and she wondered if there were anything they could do to salvage this. She didn't know, maybe it was just the general emotional jumble talking, but...if she was going to be a girl...a woman...for the rest of her life...she did like him, it was just...oh, she didn't know! She liked him as a person, she found him attractive, but...but could she even do any of that? Be the kind of girl he wanted? Even if he hadn't intended that, what was the likelihood that what he wanted in a girl was anything like what she was? Maybe the Woman considered her one, but that didn't mean that she was anything like anybody's ideal anything...not with her bizarre half-human body, not with her shorter, stockier build, not with her general lack of feminine mannerisms...she couldn't just up and change all that, and she wouldn't want to lead him into thinking she was going to...
There was a knock on the front door. Karyn had gone home a while ago, when Jon had more or less settled down emotionally and she'd wanted to check on her own parents, and Mr. and Mrs. Madison had taken the opportunity afforded by the restored Sun to go have a quiet afternoon at a coffee shop. Zoe was napping, and Mikey had gone to visit that statue-girl from her class, taking Becca with her, if Jon remembered correctly. (Neither of her siblings had changed back, either, somewhat to her surprise.) She didn't much feel like talking to anybody right now, but there wasn't anybody else here to answer the door. Taking a deep breath, she got up, straightened her hair a bit, and slid downstairs to the entryway.
Tim's heart leapt when the door opened to reveal not some human guy he didn't know, but Jon the slug-girl, with her dark brown hair and her soft yellow antennae and the face that he knew so well. It leapt, in fact, straight up into his throat, where it knocked against the roof of his mouth and kicked his brain into tumble-dry. She was still her! He couldn't be happier! But she probably hated him for this morning...but she was her, maybe she didn't hate him, maybe they still had a chance...! ...but he still owed her an apology, because he'd been stupid and insensitive, and...and...
Jon stared at him. He hadn't changed back...he was still the dark elf boy with the soft, gentle build and the youthful masculine features and the midnight skin crowned with snow-white hair...but he'd been such a twit! But he was here all the same, she hadn't driven him away...but she'd been so brusque and cold...
They stood there for a long moment, neither of them saying anything. Tim looked like he'd been crying, or at least fighting back tears; that made her feel even worse. And still she just...couldn't think of what to say to him.
...no, no, that was a lie. She knew perfectly well what to say to him, she was just afraid to say it. The hardest part of apologizing is actually doing it, she thought to herself.
"I'm...I'm sorry," Tim said at last, ears drooping. "I was such a jackass...I didn't even bother to think about how you were feeling, I just assumed that you felt the way...I wanted you to. ...sorry."
The slug-girl sighed. "I was worse," she said. "I...I took all the stress from not dealing with this for six months and...and I just dumped it on you because you were the one who forced me to acknowledge it. I'm...sorry I was such a...such a bitch, Tim."
The drow-boy nodded. There was another long pause. "Did...did you decide not to change back?" he ventured. "I mean, if I can ask...I just...I'd hate for you to have done that because...because I pushed you..."
Jon shook her head. "It...it just happened this way," she said. "The way I worded the wish...it might be that...that I'm supposed to...to stay like this. I don't know. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. It's gonna be another six months anyway, I just...God, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it..."
Tim stared at her, not quite sure what to say. "I...then I...I won't bring it up, I promise," he said. "Not if you're still figuring all this out...I'm sorry I did..."
Jon looked up at him, blinking in surprise. She shook her head. "N-no," she said. "It's okay. Not...not talking about this and shoving it down inside is why this whole thing was such a mess in the first place." She took a deep breath. "I...look, I'll be honest, Tim. I really..." She gulped. "I...really do...like you." She sighed heavily; it was an incredible thing to admit, but it was such a weight off her chest...
"But...I'm still so confused...I spent all this time thinking the best thing was just to power on through and go back to the way things used to be as soon as possible, and now I'm..." She hesitated. "...now I'm...facing the prospect of...of spending the rest of my life like this...the idea that maybe it's actually better for me to spend my life like this...I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I don't know how to be a girl, Tim. If I am going to be one, then there's...there's still so much I have to learn...I don't think I can just be what you want from me. I...I don't know how long it'll take before I can really be this..."
Tim came up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She didn't fight it or shrink from it; in fact, it was very comforting. She moved a little closer to him. It felt good. "Listen," he said, "we can...we can take it as slow as you need, Jon. I can wait. It's just...I don't want you to 'be a girl' or anything. I didn't spend all this time with you because I was waiting for you to become someone else. I...I like you, Jon. And...if you need time to get used to this, then that's okay, because...you're still Jon."
She pulled back and looked up at him. "You...you do?" she asked, frowning. "I mean, you don't? Uh, want me to be a...?"
He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. "I...well, I mean, I am attracted to...to what you are, but...I'm not looking for you to become some other person, y'know? I don't think you'd be better if you were only just some generic girly-girl, or anything...I just...I like you." There was a slight purple tinge to his black skin that she took to mean he was blushing. So was she, though she wasn't quite aware of it.
She stared at him. "I...you...you like this?" she asked incredulously, gesturing down at her...her slug body. "I mean, this? Really?" It was strange enough when random guys at school were staring at her breasts - she knew firsthand how guys could compartmentalize and fixate on even individual parts of a woman's body, and it was no stretch to assume that they probably weren't even paying attention to the part of her that was half-slug, that was a bizarre boneless lump of muscle tissue coated in banana-yellow skin and a layer of mucous, and that left a trail behind her when she moved - but to be informed that someone - a guy she knew, at that, not just some random dude in the hall - found this attractive? It was beyond comprehension...!
Tim's blush deepened. "Well...well, yeah!" he said, as if she'd just asked him whether drinking water made him less thirsty. Then he frowned. "It's...um, it's not some fetish thing or anything-" he stammered, then planted his forehead into his palm when he realized what he was saying - this was probably not the best way to take it slow and let her adjust.
Jon felt a bit empathetically embarassed; she knew how it could be sometimes. And in spite of the awkwardness, she found herself gently smiling. She nudged him out of his face-palm and looked him in the eye. "It's...it's okay," she said, simultaneously wanting to laugh and cringe, but successfully avoiding doing either. "I just...I wouldn't have thought anybody could. But...it seems like everybody sees...all these things...differently than I do..."
Tim smiled back. "Guess so," he said. "And...even if I was being kind of an idiot there, I...I really do mean what I said. We can take it slow, if you need time...I'm happy to just to be with you, honestly."
The slug-girl nodded. "I...thanks," she said. "I appreciate that. I really do."
