The Labyrinth-Ateez x reader

Up and Up

Y/N gasped. The whizzing blades were rapidly drawing nearer. Wooyoung was pawing pathetically at the great door and mumbling to himself. But Y/N wasn't listening. She was looking around for an escape - above, below. She dashed along the side walls, looking for a handle or button. There had to be some way out. That was how the Labyrinth worked. There was always some trick, if only she could find it. The clanking noise was louder. She glanced momentarily at what Wooyoung was doing. He was still just scrabbling at the door. It was no use trusting him. What could she do? Her eye fell on part of the wall, to one side of the door, that looked distinct from the rest, a panel of metal plates. She pushed at it and felt it give a little. "Wooyoung!" she shouted above the echoing din. "Y/N!" he answered, hammering his fists against the door and kicking it, as though it could be expected to relent in the face of such frustration. "Don't leave me!" "Get over here and help me," she yelled back at him. Wooyoung joined her. Together they shoved with all their weight onto the metal plates. "Come on," Y/N told him, "push, you double-crosser. Push!" Wooyoung was taken aback but continued pushing. "I can explain," he panted. "PUSH!" The panel caved in suddenly. They fell through the space it left and sprawled flat on it. Behind them, the machine slashed through the air just beside their feet. When it reached the great barred door, there was a terrible crunching sound as the knives and cleavers bit through the wood, spitting it out as splinters, which the whirling brushes swept up neatly. The machine was cranked along by four goblins, standing on a platform behind the wall of knives. They were grunting and sweating with the effort of turning handles and working levers to keep the contraption whirring. The racket clattered onward, through the demolished doorway, and off into the distance. Y/N laid on her back, recovering her breath. Wooyoung looked down at her. "He's throwing everything at us," he said, and shook his head with a trace of admiration. "The Cleaners, the Eternal Stench - the whole works. He must like you a lot." Y/N answered with a faint, forced chuckle. "He's got some funny ideas." Wooyoung was busy again. Eyes darting left and right beneath his eyebrows, he clumped around in the shadows until he found what he was looking for. "This is what we need," he called. "Follow me." She sat up and looked. There, on the floor of the tunnel they had entered, she saw the base of a ladder. It led up into darkness. "Come on," Wooyoung was calling. He stood by the first rung waiting for Y/N. Y/N went over to him. The ladder looked unsafe to her. It was constructed of an odd assortment of bits of wood, planks, and branches, patched together with ends of rope and half-driven nails. "Come on," Wooyoung urged. She stood with one hand holding the ladder. "How can I trust you," she asked, "now that I know you were taking me back to the start of the Labyrinth?" "I wasn't," Wooyoung protested, and stared fiercely at her with those puppy eyes of his. As a liar, he was so bad it was quite touching. "I told him I was taking you to the start of the Labyrinth, to throw him off the scent, d'ya see? Heh-heh. But actually -" "Wooyoung." Y/N smiled reproachfully at him. "How can I believe anything you say?" "Well," he replied, "let me put it this way. What choice do you have?" Y/N thought about it. "There is that." "And now," Wooyoung said, "the main thing is to get back up." And he started again and gestured to the rickety ladder. Y/N lifted a leg up, Wooyoung watched her start, and followed. At any moment she thought the thing might collapse; but then, as Wooyoung had said, what choice did she have? Without lifting his head, Wooyoung called out, "The other main thing is not to look down." "Right," she called back, and, as though it were a playground dare, she had to snatch a little look past her feet. "Ooooh!" she cried. They had climbed much higher than she would have thought possible in the time. The wobbly ladder seemed to stretch down below Wooyoung forever. She could not see the bottom of it, nor could she see the top. She felt unable to climb another rung. Clutching the sides of the ladder, she started to shake. The whole ladder shook with her. Below, Wooyoung clung to the shaking ladder. "I said don't look down," he groaned. "Or perhaps don't means do where you come from?" "I'm sorry, I didn't realize ..." "Well, when you've done all the shaking you want, perhaps we could continue." "I can't help it," Y/N whined. Jumping around like a monkey on a stick, Wooyoung managed to answer, "Well, we'll just have to stay here until one of us falls off, or we turn into worm food." "I am sorry," Y/N told him, still shaking. "Oh, good. She's sorry. In that case, I don't mind being shaken off to my certain death." Breathing deeply, and looking resolutely upward, Y/N forced herself to think of happy, secure things: Dozer, her room, lovely midnight walks, music. It worked. She gained control of her body and started to climb again. Wooyoung felt her moving, and he went on, too. "See," he called up to her, "you've got to understand my position. I'm a coward, and Hongjoong scares me." "What kind of position is that?" "A very humble one. That's my point. And you wouldn't be so brave, either, if you'd ever smelled the Bog of Eternal Stench. It's ... it's ..." It was his turn to pause on the ladder, and control his shakes. "What is it?" "It makes me feel dizzy just to think of it." "Is that all it does?" Y/N asked. "Smell?" "Believe me, that's enough. Oh, dear me. You wait, you just wait, if you get that far." "Can't you hold your nose?" "No." Wooyoung shuddered again, but started to climb. "Not with this smell. It gets into your ears. Up your mouth. Anywhere it can get in." Y/N thought she could see the top at last. There were little rays of sunlight above her head. "But the worst thing," Wooyoung continued, "is if you so much as get a splash of the muk on your skin you will never, never be able to wash the stench off." She was on the top rung now. She reached up, fiddling with a sliding bolt and pushed open a wooden hatchway. Outside was a clear blue sky. Y/N had never seen anything so beautiful.