The Labyrinth-Ateez x reader

The Butterfly

Nobody saw the butterfly, purple in the moonlight, black against the stars, nobody heard him as he fluttered over on silent wings of silk. The butterfly saw and heard everything. He settled in a field, his legs delicate on a flower, as he stared at the girl in the garden below. The wind hummed, swaying the flower, scudding low clouds across the setting sky. It lifted the girl's hair. The butterfly was watching her. The girl moved slowly from the road toward the middle of the garden where a pond glimmered. She was concentrating. Each step took her closer to her purpose. Her hands were open, and held slightly in front of her. The wind sighed again in the garden. It blew her cloak tightly against her figure, and rustled her hair around her face. Her lips were parted. "Give me the child," Y/N said, in a voice that was soft, but firm with the courage her quest needed. She halted, her hands still held out. "Give me the child," she repeated. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle within the City, to take back the child you have stolen." She bit her lip and continued, "For my will is as strong as yours ... and my kingdom is great ..." She closed her eyes tightly. Thunder rumbled. The butterfly's wings fluttered, once. "My will is as strong as yours." Y/N spoke with even more intensity now. "And my kingdom is great ..." She frowned, and her shoulders dropped. "Damn," she muttered. Reaching under her cloak, she brought out a book. Titled 'The Labyrinth'. Holding the book up before her, she read aloud from it. In the fading light, it was not easy to make out the words. "You have no power over me ..." She got no further. Another clap of thunder, nearer this time, made her jump. It also alarmed a big Alapaha bulldog, who had not minded laying by the pond and being admonished by Y/N, but who now decided that it was time to go home, and said so with several sharp barks. Y/N held her cloak around her. It did not give her much warmth, being no more than an old sheet, cut and hemmed. Fastened at the neck by a leaf brooch. She ignored Dozer, the bulldog, while concentrating on learning the speech in the book. "You have no power over me," she whispered. She closed her eyes again and repeated the phrase several times. A clock above the little garden in the park chimed seven times and penetrated Y/N's concentration. She stared at Dozer. "Oh, no," she said. "I don't believe it. That was seven, wasn't it?" Dozer stood up and shook himself, sensing that some more interesting action was due. Y/N turned and ran. Dozer followed. The thunderclouds showered them both with large drops of rain. The butterfly had watched it all. When Y/N and Dozer left the park, he sat still on his flower, in no hurry to follow them. This was his time of day. He knew what he wanted. A butterfly is born with all his questions answered. All the way down the street, which was lined on both sides with cottage styled houses similar to her own, Y/N was muttering to herself, "It's not fair, it's not fair." The mutter had turned to a gasp by the time she came within sight of her home. Dozer, having bounded along with her on his bear-like paws, was wheezing, too. His mistress, who normally moved at a gentle, dreamy pace, had this odd habit of liking to sprint home from the park in the evening. Perhaps that butterfly had something to do with it. Dozer was not sure. He didn't like the butterfly, he knew that. "It's not fair." Y/N was close to sobbing. The world at large was not fair, hardly ever, but in particular her stepmother was ruthlessly not fair to her. There she stood now, in the front doorway of the house, all dressed up in that frightful, dark purple evening gown of hers, the fur coat left open to reveal the low cut of the neckline, the awful necklace vulgarly winking above her pale breast, and — wouldn't you know? — she was looking at her watch. Not just looking at it but staring at it, to make sure that Y/N would feel guilty before she was accused, again. As she came to a halt on the tone path in the front garden, she could hear her baby brother, b/n, bawling inside the house. He was her half brother really, but she did not call him that, not since her school friend f/n had asked, "What's the other half of him, then?" and Y/N had been able to think of an answer. "Half cockroach." That was no good. It wasn't true, either. Sometimes she felt fiercely protective of b/n, she wanted to dress him up and carry him in her arms and take him away from all this, to a better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other times — and this was one — she hated b/n, who had twice as many parents in attendance with him as she had. When she hated him, it frightened her, because it led her into thinking about how she could hurt him. There must be something wrong with me, she would reflect, that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate? She wished she had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain it to her, but there was no one. Her friends at school would think her a witch if she even mentioned the idea of hurting b/n, and as for her father, it would frighten him even more than it frightened Y/N herself. So she kept the perplexity well hidden. Y/N stood before her stepmother and deliberately held her head high. "I'm sorry," she said, in a bored voice, to show that she wasn't sorry at all, and anyway, it was unnecessary to make a thing out of it. "Well," her stepmother told her, "don't stand out there in the rain. Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Y/N to pass her in the doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch. Y/N made a point of never touching her stepmother, not even brushing against her clothes. She edged inside close to the door frame. Dozer started to follow her. "Not the dog," her stepmother said. "But it's pouring." Her stepmother wagged her finger at Dozer, twice. "In the garage, you," she commanded. "Go on." Dozer dropped his head and moped around the side of the house. Y/N watched him go and bit her lip. Why, she wondered for the trillionth time, does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when they go out in the evening. It was so cheesy — that was one of Y/N's favorite words, since she had heard her mother's husband, use it to put down another actor in the show they were watching — such a toolbag of over-the-top clichés. She remembered how John had sounded funny when he said clichés, thrilling her with his sophistication. Why couldn't her stepmother find a new way into the part? Oh, she loved the way in which he talked about actors. She was determined to become a singer herself, so that she could talk like that all the time. Her father talked at all about people at his office, and when he did it was dreary in comparison. Her stepmother closed the front door, looking at her watch once more, took a deep breath, and started one of her practiced speeches. "Y/N, you're an hour late ..." Y/N opened her mouth, "I said I was sorry-" her stepmother cut her off, with a little, humorless smile. "Please let me finish, Y/N. Your father and I go out very rarely —" "You go out every weekend," Y/N interrupted rapidly. Her stepmother ignored that. "— and I ask you to babysit only if it won't interfere with your plans." "How would you know?" Y/N had half turned away, so as not to flatter her stepmother with her attention, and was busy with putting her book on the hall stand, unclipping her brooch, and folding the cloak over her arm. "You don't know what my plans are. You don't even ask." She glanced at her own face in the mirror of the hall, checking that her expression was cool and poised, not over the top. She liked the clothes she was wearing: a dark brown colored shirt with full sleeves, a black waistcoat loosely over the shirt, blue jeans, and a leather belt. She turned even further away from her stepmother, to check on how her shirt hung from her breasts down to her waist. She tucked it in a little at the belt, to make it tighter. Her stepmother was watching her coldly. "I am assuming you would tell me if you had a date. I would like it if you had a date. A (your age) girl should have dates." Well, Y/N was thinking, if I did have a date you are the last person I would tell. What a tacky — no, tasteless — view of life you do have. She smiled grimly to herself. Perhaps I will have a date, she thought, perhaps I will, but you will not like it, not one bit, when you see who's dating me. I doubt you will see him. All you will know about it is hearing the front door shut behind me, and you will sneak to the window, as you always do, and poke your nose between those horrid sheer curtains you put up there, and you will see the tail lights of a wicked dove-gray limousine vanishing around the corner. And after that, you will keep seeing pictures in the magazines of the two of us together in Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Paris. And there will be nothing at all you can possibly do about it, for all your firm views on bedtimes and developmental psychology and my duties and rolling up the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Oh, you are going to be sorry when you read in Vogue about the cosmic cash that producers are offering us for — Y/N's father came down the stairs into the hall. In his arms he was carrying b/n, clad in black-and-white striped pajamas. He patted the baby's back. "Oh, Y/N," he said mildly, "you're here at last. We were worried about you." "Oh, leave me alone!" Afraid that she might be close to tears, Y/N gave them no chance to reason with her. She ran upstairs. They were always so reasonable, particularly her father, so long-suffering and mild with her, so utterly convinced that they were always obviously in the right, and that it was only a matter of time before she consented to do as they wished. Why did her father always take that woman's side? Her mother never wore that look of pained tolerance. She was a woman who could shout and laugh and hug you and slap you all within a minute or two. When she and Y/N had a quarrel, it was an explosion. Five minutes later, it was forgotten. In the hallway, her stepmother had sat down, still in her coat. Wearily, she was saying, "I don't know what to do anymore. She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy tale, no matter what I say. I have tried." "Well ..." Y/N's father patted b/n thoughtfully. "It is hard to have your mother walk out on you at that age. At any age, I suppose." "That's what you always say. And of course you're right. But will she never change?" Holding his son in one arm, he patted his wife on the shoulder. "I'll go and talk to her." Thunder rumbled again. A squall of raindrops clattered on the windows. Y/N was in her room. It was the only safe place in the world. She made a point of going all around it each day, checking that everything was just where it had been and should be. Although her stepmother came in there, except to deliver some ironed clothes or to give Y/N a message, she was not to be trusted. It would be typical of her to take it into her head to dust the room, even though Y/N made sure that it was kept clean, and then she would be bound to move things around and not put them back where they belonged. It was essential to ward off that disturbing spirit. All the books had to remain in the proper positions, in height order. Other shelves were filled with music, and little nick-nacks she had collected, and they were positioned according to affinities known only to Y/N. The curtains had to hang exactly so that, when Y/N was lying on her bed, they symmetrically framed the second birch tree that she could see from the window. The wastepaper basket stood so that its base just touched the edge of one particular block on the parquet floor. It would be unsafe if these things were not so. Once disorder set in, and the room would never be familiar again. People talked about how upsetting it was to be burgled, and Y/N knew just how it must feel, as though some uncaring stranger were fooling around with your most precious soul. The woman who came in to clean three times a week knew that she was never to do anything to this room. Y/N looked after everything there. She had learned how to fix electric plugs, and tighten screws, and hang pictures, so that her father should have no need to come in except to speak to her. Y/N was now standing in the middle of her room. Her eyes were red. She sniffled, and chewed her lower lip. Then she walked over to her dressing table and gazed at a framed photograph. Her father and mother, and herself, aged ten, gazed back at her. Her parents' smiles were confident. Her own face in the photograph was, she thought, slightly over the top, grinning too keenly. All around the room, other eyes watched. Photographs and posters displayed. On the wall beside the bed was pinned a poster advertising her favorite movie; in the picture, Near the poster were more clippings, from different shows arranged in chronological order. Still sniffling from time to time, Y/N went to the small table beside her bed and picked up the music box her mother had given her for her fifteenth birthday. The memory of that gorgeous day was still vivid. A taxi had been sent for her in the morning, but instead of going to her mother's place it had taken her along the waterfront to where her mother and her husband were waiting in his old black Mercedes. They went out into the country for lunch beside a swimming pool at some club where they were members and the waiters spoke French, and later, in the pool, they had clowned around, pretending to drown, to such an effect that an elderly man had rung the alarm bell. They had giggled all the way back to town. At her mother's place, Y/N was given her step father's present, an evening gown in sage green. She wore it to go with them to a new movie that evening, and afterward to supper, in a dimly lit restaurant. her step father was wickedly funny about every member of the movie. Y/n's mother had pretended to disapprove of his scandalous gossip, but that had only made Y/N and him laugh more uncontrollably, and soon all three of them had tears in their eyes. He had danced with Y/N, smiling down at her. As they said good night, her mother gave Y/N a little parcel, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a sage green bow. Back in her room, Y/N had unwrapped it, and found the music box. The tune of "Greensleeves" tinkled, and a little dancer in a frilly purple dress twirled pirouettes. Y/N watched it reverently, until it became slow and jerky in motion. Then she put it down, and quietly recited from a poem she had studied in her English class: "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?" It was so easy to learn poetry by heart. She never had any difficulty in remembering those lines, whenever she opened the music box. In fact, she reflected, it's easier to remember them than to forget them. So why was she having such trouble learning the speech from The Labyrinth? It was only a game she was playing. No one was waiting for her to rehearse it, no audience, except Dozer, who would judge her performance of it. It should have been a piece of cake. She frowned. How could she ever hope to go on stage if she could not remember one speech? She tried again. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the City, to take back the child you have stolen ..." She paused, her eyes on her poster, and decided it would help her performance if she prepared for it. If you're going to get into a part, her mother had told her, you've got to have the right prop. Costume, makeup, and wigs — they were more for the actor's benefit than for the audience's. They help you escape from your own world and find your way into the part. And after each show, you take it all off, and you've wiped the slate clean. Every day was a fresh start. You could invent yourself again. Y/N took an eyeliner from the drawer in her dressing table, put it on her eyes, and blinked, as her mother did. Her face close to the mirror, she applied a little more to the corners. There was a tapping on her door, and her father's voice came from outside. "Y/N? Can I talk to you?" Still looking in the mirror, she replied, "There's nothing to talk about." She waited. He would not come in unless she invited him. She imagined him standing there, frowning, rubbing his forehead, trying to think what he ought to say next, something firm enough to please that woman but amicable enough to reassure his daughter. "You'd better hurry," Y/N said, "if you want to make the show." "b/n's had his supper," her father's voice said, "and he's in bed now. If you could just make sure he goes to sleep all right, we'll be back around midnight." Again, a pause, then the sound of footsteps walking away, with a slowness measured to express a blend of concern and resignation. He had done all that could be expected of him. Y/N turned from the mirror and stared accusingly at the closed door. "You really wanted to talk to me, didn't you?" she murmured. "Practically broke down the door." Once upon a time, he would not have gone out without giving her a hug. She sniffled. Things had certainly changed in this house. She put the eyeliner in her pocket and wiped her eyes with a tissue. As she went to throw it in the garbage basket, something caught her eye. More exactly, something that was not there caught her eye. Arthur was not there. Rapidly, she rummaged through her shelf of nick-nacks and cuddly things, frogs, acorns, leaves, and dried flowers. Though she knew it would be pointless. If the teddy bear were there at all, he would have been in his appointed place. He had gone. The order of the room had been violated. Y/N's cheeks were hot. Someone's been in my room, she thought. I hate her. Outside, the taxi was pulling away. Y/N heard it and ran to the window. "I hate you," she screamed. No one heard her except Dozer, and he could do no more than he was doing already, which was to bark loudly, in the garage. She knew where she would find Arthur. b/n already had everything his baby heart could desire, had so much more than Y/N herself had ever had; yet more was given to him, every day, without question. She stormed into the nursery. The teddy bear was spread on the carpet, just tossed away, like that. Y/N picked Arthur up and clutched him to her. b/n, full of warm milk, had almost been asleep in his crib. Y/N's entrance awakened him. She glared at the baby. "I hate her. I hate you." b/n started to cry. Y/N shuddered, and held Arthur still more tightly. "Oh," she wailed. "Oh, someone ... save me. Take me away from this awful place." b/n was howling now. His face was red. Y/N was wailing, Dozer was barking outside. The storm delivered a lightning flash and clap of thunder directly above the house. It rattled the windows in their frames. Teacups danced in the kitchen cupboard. "Someone save me," Y/N begged. "Listen!" said a goblin, one eye opened. All around him, on top of him, beneath him, the nest of goblins stirred sleepily. Another eye opened, and another, and another, all crazed eyes, red and staring. Some of the goblins had horns, and some had pointed teeth, some had fingers like claws; some were dressed in scraps of armor, a helmet, but all of them had scaly feet, and all had baleful eyes. Higgledy-piggledy in a heap they slept, in their dirty chamber at the castle of the Goblin King. Their eyes went on opening, and their ears pricked up. "All right, hush now, shush." Y/N was trying to calm herself down as much as her baby brother. "What do you want? Hmm? Do you want a story? All right." With barely a moment's thought, she picked up on the thread of The Labyrinth. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful young woman whose stepmother always made her stay with the baby. The baby was a spoiled child who wanted everything for himself, and the young woman was practically a servant.. But what no one knew was this: the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with her, and given her certain powers." In the castle, the goblins' eyes opened very wide. They were all attention. The lightning and thunder crashed again, but both Y/N and b/n had become quieter. "One night," Y/N continued, "when the baby had been particularly nasty, the girl called on the goblins to help her. And they said to her, 'Say the right words, and we'll take the baby away to the City, and then you'll be free.' Those were their words to her. The goblins nodded enthusiastically. b/n was nearly asleep again, with only a light protest remaining on his breath. Y/N, enjoying her own invention, leaned closer to him, over the side of the crib. She was holding her audience in her spell. Arthur was in her arms. "But the girl knew," she went on, "that the King of the Goblins would keep the baby in his castle forever, and he would turn the baby into a goblin. And so she suffered in silence, through many a long month ... until one night, worn out by a day of slaving at housework, and hurt beyond measure by the harsh, ungrateful words of her stepmother, she could bear it no longer." By now, Y/N was leaning so close to b/n that she was whispering into his little pink ear. Suddenly he turned over in his crib and stared into her eyes, only a couple of inches away. There was a moment of silence. Then b/n opened his mouth, and began to howl loudly and insistently. "Merlin's beard!" Y/N snorted in disgust, standing up straight again. The thunder rolled, and Dozer gave it all he had. Y/N sighed, frowned, shrugged, and decided there was no way around it. She picked b/n up and walked around the room, swaying him in her arms, together with Arthur. The small bedside light threw their shadows on the wall, huge and flickering. "All right," she said, "all right. Come on, now. Twinkle-Twinkle little star and all that stuff. Come on, b/n, knock it off." he wasn't going to knock it off just for being swayed. He felt he had a serious grievance to express. "little one," his sister said sternly, "be quiet, will you? Please? Or —" Her voice lowered. "— I'll say the words." She looked up quickly at the shadows on the wall and addressed them theatrically. "No! I mustn't. I mustn't say" a few silent moments passed by as Y/N smirked at the baby "I wish ... I wish ...'" "Listen," said the goblin again. Every glowing eye in the nest, every ear, was open now. A second goblin spoke. "She's going to say it!" "Say what?" asked a sleepy goblin. "Shush!" The first goblin was straining to hear Y/N. "Shut up!" other goblins said. "You shut up!" said the sleepy goblin. In the hubbub, the first goblin thought he would go crazy with trying to hear. "Sh! Shhh!" He put his hand over the mouth of the sleepy goblin. The second goblin shrieked, "Quiet!" and thumped those nearest to him. "Listen," the first goblin admonished the rest. "She is going to say the words." The rest of them managed to silence themselves. They listened intently to Y/N. She was standing erect. b/n had reached such a peak of screaming, red in the face, that he could scarcely draw breath. His body was straining against Y/N's arms with the effort he was making. Arthur had fallen to the floor again. Y/N closed her eyes and quivered. "I can bear it no longer," she exclaimed, and held the howling baby above her head, like a sacrificial offering. She started to intone: "Goblin King! Goblin King! Wherever you may be, Come and take this child of mine far away from me!" Lightning cracked. Thunder crashed. The goblins dropped their heads,. "That's not right," the first goblin said, witheringly. "Where did she learn that rubbish?" the second scoffed. "It doesn't even start with 'I wish.'" "Sh!" said a third goblin, seizing his chance to boss the others. Y/N was still holding b/n above her head. Outraged by that, b/n was screaming even more loudly than before, which Y/N would have not thought possible. She brought him down and cuddled him, which had the effect of restoring him to his standard level of screaming. Exhausted by now, Y/N told him, "Oh, b/n, stop it. You little goblin. Why should I have to put up with this? You're not my responsibility. I ought to be free, to enjoy myself. Stop it! Oh, I wish ... I wish ..." Anything would be preferable to this cauldron of noise, anger, guilt, and weariness in which she found herself. With a tired little sob, she said, "I wish I did know what words to say to get the goblins to take you away." "So where's the problem?" the first goblin said with an impatient sigh, he spelled it out. "'I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.'Hmm? That's not hard, is it?" In the nursery, Y/N was saying, "I wish ... I wish ..." The goblins were all alert again, biting their lips with tension. "Did she say it?" the sleepy goblin asked brightly. As one, the rest turned on him. "Shut," they said irritably, "up." b/n's tornado had blown itself out. He was breathing deeply, with a whimper at the end of his breath. His eyes were closed. Y/N put him back in his crib, not too gently, and tucked him in. She walked quietly to the door and was shutting it behind her when he uttered an eerie shriek and started to scream again. He was hoarse now, and louder in consequence. Y/N froze, with her hand on the handle of the door. "Aah," she moaned helplessly. "I wish the goblins would come and take you away ..." She paused. The goblins were so still, you could have heard a snail blink. "... right now," Y/N said. In the goblins' nest, there was an exhalation of pleasure. "She said it!" In a trice, all the goblins had vanished in different directions, save only the sleepy goblin. He squatted there, a grin dawning on his face, until he realized that the rest had left him. "Hey," he said, "wait for me," and he tried to run in several directions at once. Then he, too, vanished. Lightning flashed and thunder hammered the air. b/n gave out with a high pitched screech, and Dozer barked as if all the burglars in the world were closing in.