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There's no mechanical or chemical reason why the application of fixative would prevent you from making alterations in a pastel. In fact, the intermediate application of fixative, with or without an additive of particulate such as pumice or marble dust, is an oft-recommended method of restoring "tooth" to an area that has become too saturated with pastel (or just worn down) to remain workable.
The problem that you may encounter is that the fixative may have changed the values and hues in your painting. Therefore, you'll likely not be able to simply reach for the exact same pastel sticks you used in the first go around.
There's extensive discussion of views on the use of fixative in pastels somewhere in here, but I've been insufficiently clever to conduct a successful search for the thread. Even moderators get the blues sometimes. I'll keep looking.
But even if you can't match the hue and value exactly, just softening the edges of those flash-induced shadows would help reduce their harshness.
As for copying the photo "EXACTLY" (as you put it), that's at the very heart of almost all cautions about the use of photos. It's a worthwhile exercise, just to see if you can reproduce with absolute accuracy the shapes, values and color, but it doesn't result in a piece with anywhere near the emotional or artistic content that a deliberate, controlled lighting scheme would offer. At the very least, give yourself license to eliminate the obvious photo "clues" -- the hard-edged shadows behind the subject on both sides, the "catchlights" in the eyes that aren't in fact highlights but are merely direct, dead-center reflections of the flash, the bright round spot of highlight aimed straight at the viewer from the middle of the forehead. Those sorts of things.
Others likely have a different take on the placement of your signature, but I'm always a bit uncomfortable with a signature placed alongside an edge of the figure (or even "shaped" to fit some curve within the figure or the clothing). Once you've gone to some trouble to create a shape bounded by an edge (with whatever lost and found qualities you might incorporate into that edge), it seems a shame to compromise it by using it as a guide for a cursive or "handwriting" style of signature, placed in whatever attitude (here, nearly vertical) the edge happens to present. While it's very important that the signature be handled as part of the overall composition, it can look a little gimmicky when it's kind of "hidden" in or around the central portrait subject. By analogy, you wouldn't, after writing a letter, squeeze your signature into some available space within the body of the letter -- between paragraphs, say -- but would give it its own distinctive placement and purpose.
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