A Truly Unbearable Reality

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Content Warning: This chapter contains depictions of dysphoria, homophobia, and invasions of privacy.
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I couldn’t breathe, my body sporadically choking back frantic gulps of oxygen on its own.

The monitor before me showed my stream ending screen, that pretty animation of my VTuber waving goodbye from a window.

That’s me. That’s me!

An incredibly fast stream of pixels on the other monitor drew my eye. My chat was flying by a mile a minute.

glizzyGodd: that was actually insane
retrievethemystic724: farewell~
RavenLord: highest quality stream i’ve ever seen fr
SnakespiritC: are we gonna get more???
meekMentorMan: farewell~
vipergirl__real__official: farewell~
stealthy_mage: that’ll go down in the history books for sure
starvingArist21: farewell~
architectOfHaunt: i need more of that, pronto
heeeeeeeelpme: fairwell~

Where was Finley? And Diana? And Marie? I looked around the room in panic. I was alone. And I was… exhausted. It was so quiet. Night and day from the throne room I had been in moments before.

A force of habit, I grabbed the mouse and hit the “end stream” button on my PC as the ending music came to a close, looking down as I did so.

My hand. My hand! It was… massive. Garish. Ugly. Hairy. Wide.

I recoiled in shock as I saw it. Then it hit me. I’m my old me again.

Slowly, still processing my sudden shift in reality, I stood up and took my headphones off. Everything felt off. I was too tall. My body felt too thick.

I looked down. Flat chest.

Nothing. I lifted my hands and felt my old pecs. No breasts. The sensation, or lack thereof, felt like getting stabbed. The pain was almost physical.

Why does this hurt so much?! I’m just me again. I’m… me. The thought was difficult to even acknowledge. I didn’t feel like me. Like Elisabeth.

I shuffled to the bed, my steps thudding with my new (well, uh, old) weight in an unfamiliar and disconcerting way. My chest was heavy, my lungs filled with lead. And yet, ironically, I felt hollow.

Collapse. Just collapse.

But something stopped me from doing so. Namely, my stomach. In addition to the sensations of my masculine body, I was starving. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in three days.

As I shambled over to the fridge of my tiny apartment, the modern amenities that surrounded me almost took my breath away. Electricity, air conditioning, lights. It wasn’t right. I shouldn’t be here.

The fridge was like a machine from the future. It’s all… cold. What are you talking about, me, of course it’s cold, it’s a freaking fridge. I reached in and grabbed a leftover sandwich. My fingernails clacked against the hard baguette bread like it was rock. This is… too stale.

Whatever. Just eat it. You’re starving, I told myself. The sandwich disappeared in a matter of seconds. The clock on the microwave read 4:06 PM.

That’s… weird. Almost exactly when I started my stream.

A loud buzz startled me, bringing my attention back to my bed. My phone (the real one, not the one I used for face tracking) lit up. Then it lit up again. It was going off nonstop.

What the hell is going on? I shuffled back over. Face first, I fell onto the mattress.

The sensations of my body became even more apparent. My torso was wider than a barn, my shoulders steel beams set across my ribcage. And down there… Well, I’m sure you can figure that out yourself. My head was strangely light, my short hair barely even noticeable compared to my golden curls from before.

“Mmmmmrrrrruuuughhhhffffff,” I groaned eloquently, my face buried in my comforter.

My phone kept buzzing. “Can you stop?” I asked. It did not reply.

Even my voice was wrong, uncanny and low, the deep rumbling in my throat nothing like the gentle timbre I had grown used to. I decided not to speak out loud.

More buzzing. Fine. I freed my face from my blankets and took a look. It was a bunch of notifications from every single social media platform I used. Comments, DMs, posts, and tags, the banners flew by as more and more poured in. What the…

I stopped them and took a look at a few. Messages from friends, VTuber colleagues, and viewers, it looked like. Everyone was talking about one thing.

“The stream.”

It was just supposed to be a small event stream. I looked over to the desk. All the snacks were still there. Did it even happen?

For that matter… What the hell actually happened? Was it just a dream or something? It felt so real, though. I lived there. I was there. A sadness overcame me. I didn’t want all that time in Andraste to have been fake.

I took a look at some more of the posts pinging my phone.

#elisabuds, favorite scene? Mine’s gotta be the festival fight. Crazy cool fight choreo! Saving the kid, too… And poor Diana. #Diana4Life #THEStream

…Huh? It was talking about… the Dawn of Spring.

I scrolled through another.

the debate against the Deighsels has to be some of the greatest stuff ever put to screen like for real i cannot beleive he called elisabeth a bitch like that lol #elisabuds

My heart started racing. That was the final confrontation in the throne room.

Another.

more elisaboobs scenes pls, her touching herslef was… 😳

…What? How did they see that!?

More.

How does it feel to have just witnessed history, #elisabuds ?? A three day marathon story, view count over 50,000, thousands in donations… He’s never been so back #THEStream

What the hell was going on!?

I couldn’t stop scrolling.

Dude, there better be a sequel, if we don’t get to see Finley kiss you I’m gonna riot

How did they know about Finley and Diana?! It was another world entirely!

My time there had definitely been real. Weeks had passed. I looked at my phone — three days since the event stream. No, I don’t care what the date says. I was there for a month. I did experience all of that. It was real.

Something intrinsic within me felt incomplete. My soul, shattered. A part of me was still stuck in that throne room, grasping, searching desperately for Finley’s hand. Like my… very essence was torn in twain.

The phrase felt familiar, somehow, but before I could focus, another thirty notifications flew by on my phone, distracting me.

How about that vindication for #DiaMarie shippers, huh? Ain’t no denying that handholding, haters! Sorrynotsorry, #DiaBeth fans

Is that what that final moment between the two had been about?

The posts just kept coming, every single one @’ing me for some reason. Kind of a pain.

is he gay or something? like wtf was that? lollll but tbh who wouldn’t love finley amirite

My chest tightened.

That adorable moment atop the roof… He actually invited you to stay, too. So cute! Gotta tell me how you pulled that off, sometime, man.

It was an arrow through the chest. That was an intensely private moment.

Did everyone see it?

I sat up. Despite the exhaustion encompassing my oversized body, my mind had been hooked up to a car battery and jolted awake by these notifications. The view into my life, the life I had lived for the last month, being so overtly direct and accurate horrified me.

These posts were written as though there had been a camera following me the entire time I adventured through Andraste. They talked about a three-day marathon story, like some movie or TV series that everyone had all binged at the same time.

Were they watching me?

Was it somehow…

Streamed?

It was the only way to explain how intimately each and every one of these people described such private details of my own life. I couldn’t think of anything else. I had become my own VTuber, after all…

I felt icky. Violated.

The private moments in which I had gently felt my new body, the fight with Marie highlighting my insecurity, the close, secret time with Finley… 50,000 people had seen all that?

I was under a magnifying glass the entire time. None of those personal things were personal.

But how was that even possible? I didn’t do anything to set up a movie or whatever. And I had not been here in this world. That much I was sure of.

The volume from Bridd Palace’s library that I had stuck that flower in as a bookmark returned to my mind. It said something about a ‘fractured soul,’ right? I put my hand on my chest. Whatever was going on, that might have been the most apt description. What was that term, though? There was a super specific term! And who was it about?

I tried to think. Unfortunately, the incessant noise of people congratulating me on a stream well done would not stop. I grabbed my phone and turned it off — fully off.

The room was overtaken by silence once again. The siren call of my bed replaced the nonstop notifications of my phone. No, stay awake, you’ve… gotta… figure…

I collapsed before I could finish the thought.