More Shades of Being [A FtM and MtF Race Change Story] - Part 2 (Patreon)

Saanvi and Soraya have spent nineteen blissful years embracing their new lives as Indian women. But when their world is suddenly upended as they are thrust back into their former identities as Kayden and Henry. Meanwhile, Soraya’s son, Arjun, who knows nothing of their past, embarks on a desperate search to find his mother and sister, uncovering unexpected truths about himself along the way.

~

Part 2

Saanvi paced; she could tell it was irritating her mother, but she couldn’t help it. Stuck in this room with nothing to do but stew, the energy had to go somewhere. Every step she took felt wrong; her legs were too thick, her hips didn't have their signature sway, and her shoulders were square; they felt stiff. It had been so long since she’d even thought about this life for more than a second; being back in this body felt wrong. Normally, she wouldn’t be annoyed about gaining a little extra youth, but not if it meant having to shave. 

“Who was that woman?” Soraya asked, after a moment, “The red head with the flair for the dramatic.”

“MY…Henry’s girlfriend. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“We only dated for four months! On and off, too; it was never serious.” Saanvi blushed, “She was hot but sort of…weird. On our second date, she started talking about marriage and kids. I think she was one of those ticking clock ladies, y’know? I have never been a settling down type, so I tried to keep my distance, but uh…Well, I never really broke up with her…”

“Because you still wanted sex on the table?” Soraya raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t judge me, Mom. This was a whole other life.”

“Fair enough,” Soraya sighed, “The way she was acting, I thought she was your wife or something.”

Saanvi sighed; she had no idea what to think. She kept pacing, squeezing her legs together and trying not to think about the thing between her legs. She had to go to the bathroom, but the idea of pulling her pants down and seeing…that made her skin crawl. 

“Just get it over with, sweetie.”

“How did you-?” “A mother knows.”

Saanvi tried to smile, but she just couldn’t manage it; logically, she knew this man was her mother, but hearing her mother's words come out of that body, with that voice just made her shudder. It was…creepy. Soraya sat with her hands in her lap, wringing her fingers over and over.

“What about your brother?” She wondered aloud, “Do you think he’s alright? Will he even notice we’re gone? He doesn't call enough, and if what that doctor said is true, will he start to forget us? Oh, I don’t think I could stand that.” 

Saanvi wished she knew what to say; the idea that her little brother was back there and might not even notice she was gone for weeks stung. She pulled the trigger and went to the bathroom, hating every second of it. When he returned, there was a new doctor in the room, an older man with wiry hair and a kind face. He placed down a folded set of clothes on each bed and gave them both a smile. 

“I’m Dr Michael.” He greeted, “Sorry about your wake-up. I understand it was a bit rough.”

Saanvi’s eyes narrowed; she knew a shrink when she saw one. 

“You’re here to try and make us act like we used to.” She surmised, “I bet those are our old clothes and everything.”

“They are indeed,” Dr Michael nodded, “Good man.”

“Not a man.”

“Some dysmorphia is expected, I imagine you felt the same when you first went to your new reality.”

“Yeah, but that passed quickly and importantly, we made the choice to change, and the choice to stay.” 

“Why don’t you both get dressed and come down to my office to talk?” The doctor said gently, “I can’t imagine you feel very open to discussion while locked in this sterile room. I can’t even blame you; I wouldn’t want to talk to me, here.”

Saanvi seethed. He was too nice. She knew weaponised kindness when she saw it. In that moment, she swore, no matter what he said, she wasn’t going to let herself be taken in. The cold air in the room was making her pale skin shiver, though, so, as wrong as it felt, she did take the clothes and slip them on. 

The jeans itched against her leg hair, and the waistband felt odd against her square hips. She pressed a hand to her chest self-consciously when she finished buttoning the shirt. She felt so…lacking without her breasts. It felt a little silly, but it was a reminder that her womanhood had been taken from her. A hand touched the nape of her neck, and she jerked only to find her mother there, fixing her collar. It was something she’d done a thousand times without thinking, but those fingers didn’t feel like her mother’s anymore; they felt like a stranger’s. 

“Sorry…”

“It’s okay, dear. Let’s get this over with.”

Dr Michael opened the door, and Saanvi resisted the urge to bolt; running wouldn't get her home. She had to be smart about this. Instead, she went into journalism mode, recording and analysing everything she saw, looking for weak points. The building didn't seem to be a hospital, much to her surprise; it looked more like an office mixed with an R&D lab. They passed rooms with long, clear windows showing scientists and engineers working on machinery, and also several rooms with beds like theirs and dormant machines; had people gone reality hopping in there? 

Dr Michael took them to an elevator, and when they stepped off, they were in a modern looking office, complete with a stereotypical chaise lounge and half a dozen chairs. Was this some sort of psychological trick? Did the chair they picked mean something? Soraya didn’t seem as paranoid as her; she took a seat on the long chaise lounge, ankles together, hands folded delicately in her lap. The position looked downright weird in her current body, but she held her head high; Indian pride still shining through even in this white man’s body. Saanvi followed her lead and took a seat next to her mother and placed a hand over hers. 

“So,” Dr Michael took a seat, “I take it this is a bit disoriented, being back in your real bodies after such a long time. My colleague informed me you’ve lived twenty years for our three. I imagine that’s quite the strange feeling.”

“Quite strange?” Saanvi scoffed, “That’s the understatement of the century.”

“I’m here to help you sort through the confusing feelings while you detox from that fantasy life.” He said gently, “I promise I won’t judge. I understand how real it felt for you.You can be completely honest with me.”

Saanvi felt her cheeks head and her hands curl into fists. The nails should have been cut into her palm; she’d had them done less than a week ago, and the French tips and gemstones should have been slicing into her skin. Instead, her nails were so short that they couldn’t cut her palm even if she wanted them to. 

“Completely honest? Okay then, this is fucked. You say that life wasn't real, but guess what? It was! It was my real life, which you have now stolen from me. There is one thing that’s true, no matter what reality I am in, I am a goddamn adult and I can make my own choices. And I choose to be Saanvi Singh!”

Her mother looked to her with pride; her eyes were too light now. Saanvi hated it. 

“We all have things about our lives we regret.” Dr Michael said gently, “Being unfulfilled is not uncommon at your age. It’s what we refer to as a midlife crisis, and everybody handles it differently in their search for fulfilment-”

“This is not a midlife crisis!”

“It may not feel like it,” Dr Michael said, “But that’s what this is. You are both young men, unmarried, in your mid-thirties, searching for purpose. There is no harm in a fun escape, but when that escape becomes a crutch, it can cause us more harm than good, can even cause us to hurt the ones we love.”

“Ones we love?” Soraya snorted, “Neither of us had anybody like that here.”

The doctor’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and he clicked his pen.

“What makes you think that?”

Saanvi had to fight to keep her eyes from rolling; did this guy seriously think they had used their new life as some sort of escape because they were sad? Soraya seemed to realise she’d accidentally given the shrink some ammunition because she refused to elaborate, and they spent a painful ten minutes in silence before Saanvi couldn't stand it anymore.

“Why is Alice here? What does she have to do with any of this?”

“It was she who raised the alarm and reached out to Kayden’s mother.” Dr Michael explained, “When she found the Reality Warper and realised what you had both done, we needed to get you back. However, pulling you back unwillingly proved quite difficult; denial is a powerful thing.”

“So is happiness,” Soraya whispered. 

“How about we switch gears, tell me about the lives you lived in this pretend reality.”

“It wasn’t pretend.” Both women said simultaneously.

“Fine, tell me about your other life.”

Soraya and Saanvi shared a look; Saanvi looked the man up and down and sighed. He had the same mad dog look in his eyes that she did when she was after a story. He wasn’t going to let up. If they were going to get anywhere near a Reality Warper and get home, they were going to have to build up some goodwill. 

“Alright, I’ll start then. My name is Saanvi Sigh, and this is my mother…”

~

Arjun sat hunched over his desk, words on the pages of his textbooks blurring as he tried to focus. How had Saanvi done this? High School had been bad enough, but college was worse, and it only got harder each year. And it didn't help that he couldn’t care less about any of it.

He'd been so excited when he moved on campus, even more so when Katie moved in with him to a co-ed room, but now, all of a sudden, the reality of it all felt so heavy. He imagined his future in an office somewhere and shuddered. It didn't matter where he imagined himself: a shop, a surgery, a business, none of them ever felt right. The one dream that did...was a home. 

Ever since he was a child watching his mother, he'd idolised that life. Being a wife and mother, cooking, and keeping house. His mother had worked too, of course, but it was those quiet moments when she was vacuuming or cooking that had captured him. Deep down, that was the life he really wanted. Free from the pressures of grades and expectations, content in the simplicity of home life.

Maybe if he'd been a girl like Saanvi, that would be alright, but he wasn't. His mother and father were forward-thinking, but they still had their cultures deeply ingrained in them. And both of those cultures believed in men being the breadwinners. So here he was. Arjun sighed; he wished he could be as passionate about something as Katie was about her engineering and computers. If only they could swap; if she were the man, he could be the housewife…

He shook his head free of the traitorous thoughts and tried to focus back on the textbook book only for his mind to immediately start wandering. He thought about his mother and what she’d said the other night with a pang of guilt. Maybe…maybe he could talk to her about this after all. 

He grabbed his phone from the desk and scrolled to his mother’s number only to find it was missing. Had he somehow deleted it? That would be bad. A frown creased his brow as he scrolled down his contacts, looking for his sister’s number. But her name was gone too; no number, no picture, nothing. Confusion settled in, an uneasy feeling starting to unfurl in his gut. 

There was probably an explanation for this, an update or something. He grabbed his name and typed in his mother's details into social media. Nothing. She wasn’t there. He checked his sister’s profile. Gone, too. Not even a hint of their existence; no posts, no traces. It was as if they had been erased. 

Arjun blinked, unsure if the room had gone colder or if it was just his growing sense of dread. He found his father easily enough, but his mother and Saanvi were just…gone. It shouldn’t have scared him so much. Maybe they just decided to get off the internet? For some reason. He was grasping at straws now, and the pit in his stomach deepened. He couldn’t shake the idea that something was very wrong.

The door opened, and Katie walked in with a bag full of wires, probably supplies for yet another tinkering project. She dumped them down on her desk with a grin, only to pause when she saw his face.

“Hey, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is everything okay?

“I don’t think so.” He muttered, “I can’t get in contact with Saanvi or my mom.”

Katie’s brow furrowed in confusion for a moment before she blinked and shook her head.

“That’s…so weird.”

“I know! I can’t even find their numbers in my phone-”

“No, I mean, for a second there I was going to ask who Saanvi was.”

Arjun froze. Katie had known who Saanvi was before they’d ever been introduced. That dread was starting to build, and he dove for his computer and quickly googled the embezzlement scandal his sister had broken. There was the information, but his sister’s name wasn’t on any of the bylines. Or on the bylines of her past stories. It was like Saanvi Singh had never existed. Frantic, he kept searching, looking for his sisters on the list of alumni, his mother on the staff, and flicking through photos online. They weren't in a single one.

“Arjun? Hey, what’s going on?” Katuie asked, but he didn't answer; instead, he ran. He ran straight out the door and down the hall and out of the building straight toward the main office. By the time he reached it, he was out of breath and his legs were aching, but he didn’t care; he had to know. When he reached the main office, he found it, the plaque displaying the names of all tenured professors. 

His mother’s name wasn’t there. 

It wasn't just missing, though; there was no gap. It was like it had never been engraved there in the first place. Like she’d never existed, this wasn’t just a digital purge; somehow his mother and sister had disappeared and if what Katie had said was right, pretty soon they wouldn’t even exist in his memories.