#baz.

The Motel was the sort of place that looked very interesting. Baz had made note of it on a few walks that took them past the building, had stopped to inspect the outside more than once. They were someone who enjoyed color, but there was something to be said of the black and white aesthetic. It was timeless for a good reason, wasn’t it? The kind of thing that kept coming back over and over again. The Motel’s dedication to it was something to admire, too; Baz changed their aesthetic about as often as they changed their face, even if they had a tendency to fall back on the same one after a while. And maybe the Motel was the same, too; they’d only seen it in black and white, but that wasn’t to say it had never changed.

It was this curiosity that drove them to it, sketchpad in hand. If they could even just sit in the lobby for a while, they could get a better feel for it. And there was free food! Baz loved free food. Especially when the free food came with free mimosas. And perhaps it was the mimosas that did them in, because they found their bladder protesting the amount they’d had to drink and the Motel harder to navigate than they’d initially considered it to be. Baz had been wandering the halls in search of a toilet for several minutes now, their footsteps silent enough to be a little unnerving. It came as a relief to see someone with a cleaning cart towards the end of the hall, and Baz rushed towards them silently. 

“Excuse me, is there a washroom nearby?” Baz asked. Or, rather… tried to ask. They opened their mouth, and it moved along to the words, but no sound came out. Baz blinked, surprise clear on their face as they tried again. “Hello?” Again, their voice didn’t come despite the movement of their mouth. They opened their mouth again, this time letting out a wordless scream. More silence met them. Panicked, they placed a hand on the maid’s shoulder, gesturing to themself wildly in an attempt to earn understanding. 

—

Sundays were the worst days at the Motel, Wynne had soon learned. They were the busiest days, though not only in a way that gave them plenty work to do to dull their mind — but also in a rather distressing way. There were a lot of rooms to clean, as Sunday was a busy checking-out day, but there were also the free brunches. An enticing offer, they knew, especially as the food was of high quality. And it was nice, that people got to have a free meal, because there were plenty out there who could not afford to go out and get a fancy brunch … but it all was a trap. They had realized this quite quickly – of which they were proud, at least – into their career at the Motel.

People came for their free brunch, ate grey-toned delicious food and drank brightly grey mimosas and when they got up to leave, they were unable to talk. Wynne had experienced this particular affliction themself too, having left work one day after having broken the ‘no speaking rule’ a few times and finding themself mute. It was a cruel trick that they could not explain, but they figured it had something to do with the Stripes’ mysterious nature. A secret society would certainly be helped by the ability to keep people quiet by force. Still, they felt bad for the guests, and wondered if they should warn the people that came by for brunch. 

They didn’t, though, which was how things like these kept happening. As they were pushing their cart through the hallways someone approached them, mouthing unheard words at them and looking panicked. It was like someone had hit the mute button on the television and drained all sound. If there was a black and white button, that one had been hit as well. Wynne offered a a wave as a greeting, but stepped back slightly when the other seemed to scream. They were glad to not hear the piercing sound, looking at the other with pity as they held onto them. They were still for a moment, before pressing a finger to their lips. As they moved their hand away, they brought thumb and fingers together repeatedly – miming ‘speaking’ – and then wagging a finger to indicate that it was not an option. Their hands moved from the guest to themself, then ended in a shrug — as if to ask: how can I help you?

—

Silence was not a state that was natural for Baz in any way. Not practicing it themself, and not sitting in it, either. It was one of those things they couldn’t help but break, as if it were a glass sitting precariously on the edge of the table and they were a cat whose paws itched to push something to the floor. They liked to speak, of course, but they often broke silences in other ways, too; tapping on the table, humming to themself, smacking their lips or kicking their feet against something to elicit a quiet thud. It didn’t really matter what the sound was, so long as there was sound and it was coming from Baz. 

But this silence was different. This silence could not be broken, no matter how they tried. Their voice wouldn’t work, and the sound of their foot stomping against the ground was swallowed up before it could rise to their ears. Even the maid was quiet. There was no squeaky wheel on their cart, no quiet sound of surprise when Baz opened their mouth to scream, and no voice rising from their throat to ask Baz what it was they needed. Instead, the maid seemed to indicate that silence was expected. It wasn’t what Baz wanted to hear — or, rather, not hear. The frustration churning in their gut felt a little too like fear, and rationality skirted out the window with it.

Their voice did not work, and the maid was refusing to use theirs. But their mouth didn’t move. Did that mean they could speak, if they chose to. Say something, Baz mouthed the words, practically pleading with the stranger to break the silence. Speak! Throw something against the wall! I’m the customer here, aren’t I? The customer’s always right! People love that saying! I’m demanding you say something! They weren’t sure how much of the rant was understandable, given that there was no sound to it and their mouth was moving a mile a minute in their desperation. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered. Normally, the sound of their own voice would have been comfort enough. But they had no voice now, and so they needed the maid to raise theirs. 

—

Distress radiated off the other, making Wynne wanting to flinch away from it and move on. They kept talking without saying anything, their lips moving desperately but no sound exiting. It was a pity they weren’t better at lip reading, otherwise they might have been able to understand some of the things they were saying. They figured it was something to do with them not being able to make any sound, or the fact that both of them had become completely black and white — though it didn’t look too bad on them, if they were honest. The guest had a bit of highlighted hair that looked great contrasted to the dark grey of the rest of their hair. They didn’t know how to convey that compliment, and it hardly felt appropriate.

They could make this easier and talk to him. They could open their mouth and try to explain the way this place operated, that everyone on the staff was expected to be quiet and that sometimes the guests ended up quiet by force. They could not explain how that happened, but the answer to them was the same as it was to many things they didn’t understand — it was some kind of magic. A magic that had to be part of the Stripes, which Wynne was determined to protect and honor. It was a mystery that would be unveiled to them in due time, and because they were patiently awaiting that, they too had taken their vow of silence during working hours.

So they shook their head, not sure what they were saying no to. They held onto the patience and calmness that had been forced upon them from birth. They looked around for a moment, then back at the guest. Wynne wondered what it could be they needed, or if they were simply in distress about being silenced. They gestured in the vague direction of the exit, mimicked walking by wiggling their fingers. Then, they moved their arms around them to indicate the outside world, moving their hands again to mimic talking. They offered a tense smile, then looked down. They were sorry.

—

The maid only shook their head, and Baz threw their head back with a groan that should have bounced dramatically off the walls but was silent instead. They hated this. They hated not being able to speak and, perhaps more than that, they hated how panicked it made them feel. They didn’t like the tightness in their throat, didn’t like the burning behind their eyes, didn’t like the way their skin felt like it was on fire. They didn’t like feeling as though the walls were closing in on them, didn’t like the panicked voice in their mind wondering if they were still real if no one could hear them. (If a tree falls in the forest and doesn’t make a sound, who gives a shit?) 

Of course, Baz had a tactic for escaping feelings they didn’t like. They had a strategy for getting out of situations they found unbearable. If the world wasn’t giving them what they wanted and they could not change the world, they would change themself instead, would become someone easier to adhere to. The maid stood in front of them, and Baz’s hand brushed against them, and maybe they knew what was going on and just weren’t saying. Maybe their voiceless act was for show. Wouldn't changing everything about themself undo whatever it was that had been done to them? 

With little thought on the consequences that might arise from the plan, or even the logic (or lack thereof) behind it, Baz pulled up the maid’s face to the forefront, collapsing Sebastian’s sharp cheekbones and angular features to mold those angles in a different direction. They were good at changing, though they hadn’t always been. As a child, it would have taken them minutes, at least, to accomplish a thing like this. Now, though, it took only seconds. One moment, Baz stood in their normal form, Sebastian’s borrowed face stretched across them like armor. The next, the maid was staring at a copy of themself, expression still a little panicked. Baz sighed as the new face set in, opening their mouth to speak. That’s better, they tried to say, but nothing came out again. Baz groaned silently, stomping their foot and throwing their arms out. Fuck! 

—-

It was crucial they learned more miming. Wynne wondered if there were any summer classes on it at the university, anything to help them communicate with people nonverbally better. They could also start carrying a notepad to write down answers and questions, but that would feel like cheating. They did not want to cheat. They felt despair rise in them as the other seemed dissatisfied with their answers, and their mind started to work over hours to figure out a way out of this. They could just dive into a hotel room and pretend their job was too crucial for them to loiter around, but that would not help with the despair.

To be fair, not much helped with the despair.

There was no chance for a plan or solution to form, though. There was a brush of skin against their own and then something happened that felt too big to comprehend. Like it was pushing at the borders of their head, trying to expand and make their brain explode. Wynne watched as the guest’s features changed into their own, hair growing from the short hairdo into their own long braids, falling down their shoulders. The expression on their face was discomforting — they imagined they looked like that often, but it wasn’t like they often ended up seeing it like this. Not in black and white, but certainly not that stressed out.

Now, Wynne did make a sound. Something between a whine and a groan, silent and tired. Whatever this was, why did it have to happen to them? Why did they have to witness themself form words without sound, stomping and throwing a fuss? It looked all wrong. It looked pathetic, even. They understood why people had been strict with them whenever they were near a tantrum. “What did you do?!” The words left their mouth, disrupting the eerie quiet that enveloped the whole hotel. “Stop it! Give it — give it back!” Their hands flew to their own face and hair, trying to figure out if they had stolen their face, but finding it intact as far as they could tell. 

—

The maid did make a sound now, a quiet squeak followed by actual words. Baz was a little shocked. They could have spoken this entire time? Why, then, had they been gesturing wordlessly while Baz panicked? Was it some attempt at empathy, some way of standing in solidarity? Baz didn’t want solidarity! They wanted answers! And their voice! Mostly their voice, actually. At the end of the day, the why of things did not matter much to the doppelganger. If their voice was returned to them now, they’d likely walk away with no further questions at all, just pleased to be able to listen to themself speak once more. But they could not mimic the maid’s voice, even with their face stretched out over them. They could not speak, even in a stranger’s quiet tones. And they hated that. They thought they might hate that more than they’d hated anything else in a long, long while.

The maid seemed a bit distressed now, demanding that Baz give back… something. The doppelganger, too caught up in their own thoughts, couldn’t quite puzzle out what they meant by that. They hadn’t taken anything! They were the one who had had something stolen — something far more valuable than whatever it was the maid had lost. Their voice was gone. There was nothing more important than that, nothing they cared about more.

“You give it back!” They replied wordlessly, pointing an accusing finger at the maid. “You’ve stolen my voice! What have you done to me?” It must have been the maid’s fault, they decided, if only because the maid was the only person within pointing distance. “What is it you want? I haven’t got any money. I wouldn’t be at a free brunch if I had money, now would I?” Perhaps it would have been wiser to limit themself to short sentences to make it easier for the maid to read their lips, but… Well. Baz had never much cared for wisdom.

—

Wynne had seen magic, encountered demons, beasts and undead, but this was something different entirely. It was different from the energy that made people mute after spending a certain amount of time at the Motel, different from the way Ariadne had to create dreams to stay alive and different too, from what had gone on at their former home. They kept their hands on their face, their familiar features still under their fingertips which had to mean there were two of them in this hotel now.

Panic constricted their chest as they were confronted with a copy of themself, acting panicked and outraged. There was one shallow thought – is this what I look like when I’m upset? – but most of all Wynne was getting stuck on the implications. If someone could look like them, the possibilities of what they could do were endless. They tried to make sense of what the other was trying – keyword here being trying – to say, but it was impossible through all the confusion. They let their hands rest on their face, half-covering their eyes as they tried not to start crying.

“I know this is upsetting!” they said eventually, possibly interrupting the other’s silent words. “It has happened to me too.” One of their first days at work, they had found their voice box broken, and after that they had learned not to talk at work as much any more. Wynne was good at following rules, after all, and now that they were breaking them they felt their chest constrict more. “But when you leave and you wait you will get your voice back, so you should just do that and – and – stop looking like me!” It was hard to sound forceful and direct when they were talking in a hushed voice, and then there was the panic making them less effective, too. “So just go!”

—

The maid was covering their face now, which was a bit confusing. Baz rarely saw how people reacted to having their features borrowed; most of the time, when Baz took on a new appearance, its original owner was somewhere else. After all, their life with their father had hinged on not being discovered, the secrecy being the point of the thing. And after, when they were on their own, they’d only really wanted to have a good time. It was rarely a good time when someone else found you using their face. Their ribs ached with the memory of the Swedish man who’d thrown them against the wall and threatened them with a knife, heart pounding a little quicker at the thought. At least there was no knife here, though they might have preferred that to their own strange silence. Baz needed to hear their voice to remind themself that they had one. They needed to speak to be real. What were they if they were silent? 

In a way, then, they settled on feeling somewhat comforted by the maid’s reaction to the theft of their face. At least this meant that Baz was here, was taking up space, was present. They didn’t think the other would start throwing punches — they didn’t seem the type — but even if they had, it would have been fine. Baz disliked violence, but they disliked the feeling of uncertain existence even more.

“It’s happened to you, and you still do it to other people? That’s awful!” A hypocritical (and still silent) claim, considering Baz was happy to subject others to things they themself avoided at all cost if subjecting others to it meant saving themself. But Baz couldn’t focus on their own ever-present hypocrisy, couldn’t focus on anything beyond their silence. “Wait?!? I’m meant to wait?!?! It’s my voice! I’m entitled to it, I think! Without waiting!” They stomped their foot, pushing their hands through hair an entirely different texture than their usual sort. “I won’t be going anywhere until you’ve fixed this!” 

—

They were not getting it. Wynne watched as their mirror image continued to make demands, their face strained with frustration that had no audible outlet. It was a horrible thing to witness, how their features contorted with every silent word uttered. How they looked when they stomped and ran their hands through their hair. How they looked when upset. No — not just upset, but angry.  

They had seen themself in the mirror during or after a crying session. They'd seen their reflection in the car mirrors while laughing with Ariadne. They'd seen themself focused, when braiding their hair and using the mirror as a guide. But they had never seen themself angry. Not like this, anyway — they weren't even sure if they had ever thrown a tantrum like this in their adult life. Perhaps not even as a child, because they had stopped being one at age ten. They stared, their oncoming tears halting as they froze on the spot at the sight of it. The dramatic anger, the sheer indignation, the righteousness.  

And they had stolen their face! Wynne hadn't even done this to the other, and yet they were directing their anger at them with their own features, turning the world topsy turvy. Jealousy coursed through them, a strange emotion in the face of everything. They wanted to be angry like that. They had no idea what the other was saying, though, so it was hard to give a fitting, dignified reply. “I understand you're upset, but there's nothing I can do to help you! You should leave and then in a few hours, you will be back to normal!” Their voice was reaching dangerously loud levels and on top of everything, they started to become concerned for their own voice. “Please leave. Just leave. This sucks but it is what it is, I can't help you, give me my face back and just leave and wait, okay?” They stared at their abandoned cleaning cart. They had to do better at protecting the Motel and the Stripes. They reached out for their own arm, ready to guide their clone to the exit. “We're going.” 

—

If they’d had a voice, maybe Baz could have better explained their frustration. But, of course, if they’d had a voice, there would have been no frustration to explain. It was an impossible puzzle, the kind of strange, philosophical-type question that their brother used to pose even knowing that the doppelganger would laugh instead of answering. It did not matter if the chicken came first or the egg. It mattered only that they existed. That the chicken could cluck and peck and flap its wings in a way that made it impossible to ignore; that the egg could tremble and crack and explode into a burst of color whether it was broken on the floor or hatched into a nest. They thought again of the tree in the forest, and of the way the noise only mattered if someone heard it. Baz was nothing at all without a voice to prove it. They wanted theirs back with a desperation they could not fully communicate without it.

The maid didn’t seem to understand this. They, too, looked desperate now, uncomfortable at the sight of their face twisted into the shapes Baz was carving out. Were they holding the doppelganger’s voice hostage because they did not want to hear their own parroted back to them in tones that might be uncomfortable? No, they had taken it before the shift, Baz reminded themself. It was a hard thing to remember; there were days when Baz didn’t know what face they were wearing until they spotted themself in the mirror. 

Baz let out a silent scoff as the maid insisted that they understood, because how could they? They were someone, even when they were silent. But what was Baz? Without sound, what did they have? They opened their mouth, letting out a wordless (and still silent) scream. “I want to be back to normal now! Give me my voice, and I’ll let go of your face!” No words came out, and their mouth was moving so quickly that they doubted even the owner of an identical mouth could read the words flurrying across their lips. They could have made some attempt at sign language — they’d been working on BSL since meeting Joel, and they were decently fluent in it now — but any kind of logic had long vacated their head. They knew only desperation, and desperation did not like the way the maid reached for their arm. Baz jumped backwards out of reach, holding their arms up in an x symbol between themself and their temporary twin. “I’m not leaving without my voice!”

—

Wynne understood the power of silencing someone. Back at the commune they and plenty others had felt the strength of that kind of restriction, and the elders had not even had the power to completely take away a person's ability to make noise. A stern look, a loud shush or even a demand for quiet had almost always been answered with silence. When it was not and the person saying all the wrong things continued, they were sent away for quiet contemplation. Those rooms, small yet comfortable and locked from the outside, made a person's voice lose its weight. Anything said there would not be heard except by the person who was speaking it. Wynne had been there twice. It was worse than the silencing magic they used here, though definitely comparable.

The other could kind of hear what they were saying, after all, whereas Wynne could not make any sense of the way they moved their lips. Watching their body double scoff and scream did nothing but upset them more. When they (the clone) jumped backwards and moved their (Wynne's, but not Wynne's) arms, they jumped a little as well. Touching someone suddenly wasn't something they did often, so their response confirmed that it'd be better if they just didn't do it again.

They stared at themself, even though it wasn't them, and remained quiet. They wanted to help. They always wanted to help, because that was what they had been born to do. But they did not know how to help the other. They did not control the magic of the Motel. They had told them what to do — to leave and wait. But the other was not going, and so Wynne was stuck staring at them. Maybe some people just could not be helped. “I need to get back to work,” they said, stepping towards their cleaning cart but not yet moving. “Just … it will come back if you leave. I promise.”

—

Panic was not something Baz allowed themself to feel often. This was due less to an ability to control the feeling and more to the fact that they so rarely put themself into situations where panic was a risk. They didn’t rush into danger, didn’t plant themself in front of people who might hurt them in order to imitate whatever version of bravery felt most suited for the situation. When things got rough, Baz ran away. It was what they had always done, what they fell back on time and time again. The moment fear began to twist in their chest, they found the nearest exit and took it without thought. But how could they escape their own silence? How could they run away from the voicelessness that was plaguing them here? There was no enemy to flee, no way to make a quick getaway and then force themself to forget the experience altogether as they usually might. Their voice was gone, and leaving might mean never getting it back.

They glared at the maid, who seemed more interested in their useless job than they were in Baz’s situation. Were they so cruel that they could take a person’s voice and then treat them like an inconvenience for being upset by it? What did they stand to gain? At least when Baz borrowed a face, the person who owned it still had it. That much was proven here, by two perfect copies of the same person staring at one another. 

But as cruel as they might have been, the maid was not infallible. They were not an evil genius. There were things they didn’t know. Like, for example, the power of a promise. Baz plucked it from the air, tying it into a knot and binding the maid with it as tightly as they dared. Their voice would come back if they left; the maid had promised as much, and so it would be made the truth. Otherwise, the maid would suffer, too. (Though, in all honesty, Baz didn’t want that. They weren’t vindictive; they didn’t want people to suffer for hurting them. More than anything, they just wanted people not to hurt them.)