Title: Grimoiral Geyser (Castles Crumbling)
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,411
Summary: She is a Rapunzel locked up in a tower with a heart of razor-blades hidden under her blonde, blonde hair.
Notes: Part 20 of 22 of my Speak Now (Taylor's Version) Project, a series of unconnected one-shots each based around one of the songs off of Taylor Swift's album Speak Now (Taylor's Version). Also written for the prompt 'grimoire' for the 2024 Spook Me Ficathon. Prequel to womb under water and watercolours in the rain.
Disclaimer: I just play in the sandbox Kishimoto created.

Once, I had an empire in a golden age
I was held up so high, I used to be great
They used to cheer when they saw my face

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair... and that's how the story goes. She is a silly girl before she learns to wield her magic, that Rapunzel.

Mental are the cages that will drive them all mental.

She knows this before she's ever taught to be something other than just she.

Dad's greenhouse is the bestest, most coolest place in the entire world. Ino knows this without needing to be told because, when it comes down to it, the biggest criteria is that it belongs to her dad.

Sitting there, at age five, feet dangling off of the stool, too high up to reach the ground, and watches as he weeds. Her hands are tucked under her bum, so she won't touch anything–not that she would, but just in case–and time moves too slow and too fast all at once for all her sitting.

"Do you know what this flower is?" he asks, trimming one off the stem and holding it up to her. In his face, Ino reads the expectation that she's meant to answer in the affirmative and, because she's his princess, that's something she can do.

Pitching forward, her ankles flexing as her feet hit the rung on the stool, the one mid-way down, Ino plants her elbows on her knees. The flower is pale and pretty, near as tiny and white as baby's breath, but oh so different that she can only imagine the fit any baby would be pitching.

"Is it… hemlock?" she says, knowing that it is.

After all, she's not a baby. She knows many, many things. Even before all of the after.

"Good," he says, and his smile is the kind of smile that makes other people believe things really are good.

"Tell me how it kills people." It is not a question but a command, an order, so what else can she do but tell?

Giggling, she rolls her eyes hugely at being asked something so silly. At least it's worthy of giggling.

"Not paralysis," she says, tucking her knees up under her chin. The stool is small but she's smaller still, so her feet fit easily. She is always in motion. "But it looks like it. You get real sleepy and pass out and then your throat muscles stop working and then you die. There's no known cure or resistance to it, so unless someone can make you breathe until it wears off… there's no 'either you're dead or not'."

Just dead. Just.

With a nod, her dad smiles and gestures for her to come with.

Hopping off her stool, Ino clasps her hands behind her back–she still can't touch anything until explicitly told, and does so. Her shoes make clopping noises as she along goes hopping.

Down the hall they go, through the back door to step outside to make steps across the narrow dirt path that bisects the distance between Greenhouse A and Greenhouse B. She stays close, keeping her eyes and head down.

Dangerous area of town, she's been taught. Best not to be caught up and noticed by people who are dangerous.

Inside, again, her dad motions her ahead of him to see what is kept past the plants and storage to what is further and further inside.

"Demonstration?" Ino asks, tilting her head back and thinking that she'd like to watch a demonstration.

"Maybe when you're older," he says. "I don't want to be accused of being a bad father, should someone else hear about dangerous things that can come from an actualized maybe."

Scoffing, Ino shakes her head. Scoffing.

She can keep a secret. Her mouth says only the things that have permission from she.

"Come on," he says. "You'll like this. Come."

Drawn forward by her father, Ino reaches out and takes his hand, her feet pitter-pattering and she's so small and her world is so large. This is the thought she shares with him when the demonstration turns out to be mazes for mice and traps at the end. Complicated, intricate, and tangled and the mice, helpless and clueless, are forever forward drawn.

Mice squeal and writhe in traps of wood and metal, sharp and blunt. Ino watches their pain with wide eyes and a certain uncomprehending thrill that she's been deemed old enough to be here. Her father was right, she does like this, being here with him and watching the mice.

"Next time, we'll put hemlock at the end," he says meditatively. "It'll be the time for that when it comes around next."

"Will they go for it?" Ino asks, feeling that the mice are really very stupid, even as they die. She wouldn't be so stupid. "Do they ever figure out that they're in a trap, Daddy, and that they have lost control of their own will?"

"If they did, would it matter?" he asks her back, smiling warmly at her and ruffling her hair. He laughs when she complains. "Can they get out? Think about it. What would change if they knew the truth of the precariousness of their situational if?"

Tilting her head, she fixes her hair and watches the mice, and does as she was told and thinks. What would change, if you were caught in a trap and knew it but had no way to make the trap stop and the world stop in its tracks from against you tilting?

"Still," Ino says, "I would want to know. Even if I didn't know how to use it or what to do about it, I'd want to know. Even still."

"Consider that your homework for tonight," Father says. "Write me a story about a trap and how it doesn't help. From all angles, make sure you thoroughly consider."

Another man might have jested, not in a room where mice die in traps while a young daughter watches avidly and curiously, but not her dad. Ino knows this like she knows the way her body feels like when she does cartwheels and ballet. There's no need to worry about anything, when it comes to her dad, because he's not someone else's another.

"Yes, Daddy," she says, bouncing on her feet. "Can I go get started now or did you want me to help you clean up? I'll stay, if you say yes."

Corpses are gross but, like, if her father can do it than so can she. She's not a baby. She's not scared or made ill by mice corpses.

But he shoos her off, instead, so she, grateful and with her mind already chewing over how she wants to write her story–far more interesting than the maths and spelling she's learning at her elementary school, though Ino knows she'll need that done before bed too, just to earn another smile from Daddy. Ino wonders if, as she writes her story, she'll be able to find a way past the tangled 'but'.

His hands, later, when he comes to check her homework and then tuck her into bed are soft and gentle and kind. Ino falls asleep holding one of his hands and absolutely certain that there's nothing in the world that can change the fact that the best of daddy in the world is hers, with her hand in his.

No answer to the puzzle he set her is found in her story, not that day nor the next and the next and the next. Still, Ino considers it and doesn't forget it and rereads her own words to see if the answer is hidden where she couldn't write it the first time through. Once upon a time is how all stories start but what happens in a story where the answer is no?

Night, when cuddled in bed, with her pillows and blankets and her stuffed toys, is when Daddy reads her stories. She leans against his side, warm and safe, as his long-fingered hands flip through each glossy, embossed page of their book of fairy tales, each story telling secrets. Each story as mysterious as an enchantment, whispering their knowledge like a spell-book in another language. As if a grimoire, if only they know the key to decipher the code that will leave it clear to read under the moonlight at night.

"Which spell would you learn, Daddy?" she asks, sharing these thoughts with him and adoring the way he listens with grave consideration to her. "If each story is a guide, one that leaves cookie crumbs of a path to magic, do you think it would matter which story is picked? Which is which?"

"Do you think that Snow White's spell is the same as Hansel and Gretel's is the same as Rapunzel's?" he asks her, in return. "When boiled down to the bones of each tale, what would each of them be and do?"

Put that way and the answer is obvious enough. "No, Daddy," she says. "I don't think that the magic would like it like that, being all the same when cut into piece. They're different, aren't they? Not just in one way, laid out and down put."

"Good," he says approvingly, and she knows she's found the right answer. "Very good."

Aloud, he reads her then of twelve dancing princesses and Ino falls asleep before the end, his voice sending her lilting and spinning as if she's one of the dancers and he's turned her movements into magic aloud.

Morning, when it comes, finds her alone in her bed and the story Rapunzel bookmarked for her to look at. She knows without being told that, if he were to pick a spell, it would be this one. Now she just has to figure out what kind of spell it would be, a task that she mulls over all throughout breakfast, getting ready for class with her head full of mice in traps and Rapunzel's long hair being let down, as she heads out for school into the mirror-bright morning.

What are the things that tie them together? She doesn't know, not yet, but she's confident that her daddy means for her to find the what.

"Daddy?" Ino peers into the flower shop, eyes huge and careful. The glass on the front door is smashed and there's a rock in the middle of the floor. "Daddy?"

Inside, the shop is almost like normal, except it's too quiet and she has to tiptoe to the side to not step in the razor bright shards of their door. She shuts and locks the door behind her, setting her backpack on the ground and then, on second thought, picking it up again. If she needs to hit someone, it's the heaviest thing she's got on her, and something no one would find weird for her to have inside.

Customers aren't around, though the shop is technically still open, the sign says so. Ino considers that gravely, for a moment, then flips the sign herself. Even if everything's fine, dealing with the mess comes before dealing with customers.

Money is still in the cash register. Whatever happened here, it doesn't look like it was about money.

Her hands are steady as she shuts the register and looks around with narrowed eyes. Here and now, she considers all of her daddy's lessons. What would he do, if he were her?

"Do not drop the baby," he'd told her once, after one of the lessons that she wasn't allowed to talk to people about. "It means acting normal, not drawing attention. Do not drop the baby."

That is what he'd do, she decides, and decides that she can do that.

Normal is as normal does and normal means that... Ino looks around and decides that normal would probably mean sweeping up the broken glass and then putting something against the hole in the door to keep it from getting worse and keep others from getting in. So that's what she does, though the broom is too large and she has to settle for dragging flower vases across the floor to block the door which is, in fact, probably not very normal.

Like silent, spiky sentinels the flowers and their vases march across the span of the door. They'll probably keep out anyone who might want to come in, though she's never before seen a block set up this way. No other one like.

Once that is done, she bites her lower lip thoughtfully. Daddy never wants her in danger but, if she doesn't know it's there, then it's really a matter of 'don't forget to look before you fall' and she's doing that with all her being. Ino takes her backpack with her as a weapon, deciding the broom is too big for her to use effectively, and stands at the edge of the door leading further into the store and the rest of their home. A deep breath taken once.

Twice. (Twice.)

Creeping through their home is both fun and scary, Ino decides, because she's played this game with her dad before and that was always fun but now this isn't a game and that's... that's... she's not quite sure how to feel about it. She's not a baby, to be scared so easily, but her lips tremble as she slides through their lives like a vine creeping.

Nothing is out of place on the ground floor nor up where their bedrooms are. Ino sets her bag down on her bed and takes her hair brush with her instead. It's not as heavy, to hit with as hard, but the bristles are sharp and she thinks they'll hurt a lot if she hits someone in the eyes with them. Taking that with easy is something done by no one and nothing.

Daddy's in the basement, in one of the rooms she's not allowed in usually, and there's another man with him, bleeding. Ino beams. "Daddy!"

"Stay back," he orders, not looking up from the man on the floor. "Where you are-stay."

"Sure, Daddy!" she chirps and immediately, Ino stops, all but frozen in place, her hands clutching her hairbrush. Her beaming smile goes nowhere, though, because her dad's right there and that means everything's absolutely fine. It's always been that way and, so far as she's concerned, it always will be. There's no need to be anything but completely certain of that being sure.

Wide are her eyes as she watches her dad bind the man, arms and feet, with cords that bite into flesh and make him bleed. He blindfolds him, too, and then slings him up and over onto his shoulder like it's no effort at all. Ino wonders if she'll ever be that strong. If her shoulders will ever be that sturdy and wide.

"Did you lock the door upstairs?" Daddy asks her, his smile warm and his eyes cold as snow. "From getting home until now, please tell me everything you've done and did."

Rattling off her list of things accomplished, Ino stands straight and doesn't give into the urge to shiver with excitement at the frosted look in his eyes. He's gone to that place, the one that he hides from most people, the one that other people recoil from, their own breath fearsomely rattling.

Like breathing in ashy air would be easier than facing him, and she loves him terribly and wholeheartedly, because there's nothing else in the world that he's like.

"Excellent," he tells her. "Come with me. You've earned the right to watch this. I'm very proud of you, Ino. You remembered your lessons and did excellent."

Down the hall they go, then down another set of stairs, ones she's never been allowed to set foot on before, that have always been a firm 'when you're older, Ino' and she's always obeyed that order. Now that she's older and she's impressed him, she skips as she walks and hops on each stair, the ribbons in her hair dancing as she goes. Now they go down and down and down.

"Why was he here?" she asks. "Or is that what we're doing now? To find out why?"

Thud goes each footstep, her father's a heavier counterpoint, and once hitting the floor there's a slipperiness to each step, directed into a room with a drain in the middle, and the clink of chains being fastened into place, the man hung like a holiday ornament. Behind them, the door is shut and locked tight. The meaty sound of his body hitting the wall is a different kind of thud.

Scrape goes the stool against the floor that her daddy directs her to sit upon and crinkle goes the plastic raincoat he gives her, in his size, leaving her swallowed up in it, complete with a face shield, a barrier between her and the world. She watches with wide eyes as he adorns himself thusly and her eyes go wider still, her breath catching, as blades are pulled out with each their own scrape.

Needles clink and chains rattle. Blood falls in too loud plop, plop, plops. Each tool gives her daddy a different scream from the man, even as daddy weaves his questions in a low-voiced murmur that soothes and softens the world around the edges like she's been given a soporific from a set of needles.

Cold is the stool as she grips it tightly, barely breathing, as her ears are alive with too much and not enough, desperate pleas and babbled incoherencies, the sink running with water, the crackling snap of first fire and then bone. When the man notices her, calls her a monster, Ino watches quietly as her daddy's eyes flatten into something that is truly beyond just being called icy cold.

Daddy loves her more than anything. (She does not know it but she is the only thing ever loved by her daddy.)

Louder, then, grow the screams. Sizzling goes the flesh, long strings of it falling off to land on the black linoleum. It stinks like bad barbeque, like something rotten at the core of the cut of flesh. Ino wrinkles her nose but makes sure that, whenever Daddy notices her, that any disgust is hidden. It's not about him, anyway, because she loves watching him work. It's just that it's so messy, so smelly, and she's hungry, the stranger isn't answering any questions for all that his screams keep getting louder and louder.

Forever is what it takes, though, and Ino's awfully young to stay alert for all of forever.

She falls asleep before he's done screaming. She doesn't hit the ground, doesn't remember anything, just that when waking up the next morning, snuggled up in her blankets, Ino is secure in the knowledge that her dad kept them safe. Against the whole world. Him and her. He and she.

Chalk has a peculiar smell to it, Ino decides, as she overtly doodles on the chalkboard with it and covertly watches Suzume-sensei and Daddy take a seat across from one another at Suzume-sensei's desk. She knows that Suzume-sensei would rather she not listen in, so she tries hard to look like she's not, but she also knows her daddy is fine with it, from his smile with she catches his eyes, so Ino keeps her ears open and her gaze on her flowers done up in coloured chalk.

Class would be way more interesting if all their lessons were done in pink or purple or blue, and Suzume-sensei has all these colours, so Ino wonders why only yellow and white are used when they're here during the day for class.

Night, right now, is draped outside like a lady's shawl at some fancy club or show that only happens when she's supposed to be in bed, late at night.

"Thanks for coming in, Yamanaka-san," Suzume-sensei says, sounding like she means it when she says 'thanks'.

Suzume-sensei is pretty nice, if strict, so Ino decides, as she switches out pink for purple for her next few petals, that she's probably telling the truth. That's good. If she can tell, then Daddy will be able to too, and that means whatever they talk about, nothing will go terribly wrong for Suzume-sensei.

"Naturally, my daughter's education is of the utmost importance to me," Daddy says, and she doesn't need to turn around to know he's sitting comfortably, casually, and that there's a smile on his face. The bigger girls who come into the flower shop squeal into their hands about how handsome he is when he smiles. Ino knows it's another weapon, the easiest one to use but a hard one to master. "It's no problem at all. You mentioned on the phone that there were some concerns? That's the sort of thing that would get any parent's attention. Naturally."

"Yes," Suzume-sensei agrees and she thinks that Suzume-sensei is probably smiling as well, unaware of anything to be aware about. "Ino-chan's a bright, friendly girl who is well-liked in class and her grades are excellent. Her gym teacher says she's quite athletic as well. When it comes to classroom participation and chores, she's always happy to help. Overall, she's a dream to have in class, only… well… yes…"

Papers are shuffled then, each sound loud in the office, louder than the scrapings of her stick of chalk. Ino wonders what each paper says, when Suzume-sensei has so many nice things to say about her. She hopes most of those things are written down, that there's not that many bad things about her, to take up that many papers.

"Yes," Daddy prompts, his voice gentle and persuasive. "Yes?"

"Imagination is a good thing," Suzume-sensei says. "And so are questions–nurturing Ino-chan's inquisitive nature is important to me, as her teacher. However, those questions aren't always age appropriate and can be upsetting to the other children when Ino-chan goes about asking them or, worse, trying to figure them out. No matter how good a thing it is, there's an acceptable limit, when voiced aloud, to imagination."

"Ino," Daddy says, "what sort of questions have you been asking in class? Come over here, Ino."

"Yes, Daddy," she says, setting down her chalk and going to stand by him, her hands neatly folded and her shoulders straight. "I'm sorry if I asked any bad questions, Suzume-sensei. I just really wanted to know if the questions had big answers or if they were just no or yes."

"What sort of questions were you asking Suzume-sensei, Ino?" Daddy asks and Ino looks between him and her and knows without knowing that if she was bad that won't be her who pays for it–it'll be Suzume-sensei, even if it all stems from her voiced what.

"Well, Daddy, I wanted to know if it would hurt to turn into sea foam like the mermaid does at the end of her spell-story," she says, resisting the urge to rock back and forth on her ankles. Being still is hard, at six-almost-seven, but she makes the effort because Daddy likes it when she does her best. "And, if she turned into sea foam, does that mean she was sea foam all along? Which, really, Daddy, does that mean she was never alive in the first place? And if that is the case, well–"

"Enough," he says, holding up one hand, and she shuts up immediately. He's smiling, though, so she knows it's alright, she didn't ask about any of the things only he's allowed to teach her. "Are those the kinds of questions she's been asking, Suzume-sensei? Fairy tale nonsense? I'm afraid, if that's the case, I do have to apologize. Of that sort of thing, she never can get enough."

"That is the sort of question," Suzume-sensei confirms and Ino senses rather than sees the way her daddy relaxes. "At six, most of the children aren't ready to talk and think about things straight out of Grimm's fairy tales. Or from Hans Christian Anderson. Those stories are… dark, when the children are just learning things like comparing apples to oranges and pointing out the differences between this and that."

"Sea foam is important to ask questions about," Ino says sulkily. "It's huge! It's the sea!"

Indulgently, the adults laugh, and the conversation moves on much more smoothly after that point. Ino is told to write her questions about fairytales down and show them to her dad or Suzume-sensei, not ask her classmates about it–which Ino thinks is silly, really, because she still doesn't understand what's wrong with asking these questions or why her classmates were so upset in the first place–and she agrees, mostly because doing makes her daddy smile at her indulgently.

Mad, he is not. They leave the meeting together, Suzume-sensei lingering behind to go over paperwork or something, and Ino clings to her daddy's hand and resists the urge to swing it. He notices and, to her delight, swings their arms for her sake, making them look silly as they go down the sidewalk, laughing and delightfully, in a totally different way, mad.

Halfway through the ice-cream he gets her for being so good at the meeting (and he gets one too, though it'll go uneaten, since he was asked by the cashier what flavour he wanted), they're laughing and chatting when he slices one hand down abruptly, silencing himself and Ino, too, who knows she's meant to. That's what the signal is for, as soon as they're out the door, more than halfway.

After a moment, he sighs. "A bird," he says, tossing his ice-cream cone in the nearest trash, and Ino nods like she's been taught, and starts chattering about the birds she knows about, and doesn't question it when he rests one hand on the back of her head the rest of the way home. 'A bird' means they're being followed, when it comes as a statement after.

Ino sleeps nestled close against her daddy's side that night, in the safe room in the second basement. She doesn't worry about it, since he's with her, and he'll destroy anything that tries to touch his Ino.

At seven, Ino loves to go to the mall, peer inside the stores and try to guess what other people are going to buy. She'd go every day, if she could, but Daddy indulges her, to a point, since he quietly does not like the mall, with its loud noises, crowds of people, and so many security risks–too many to count. Too many to ever be sure of having gone unnoticed (she doesn't quite understand why they must be unnoticed) and so they go only twice a month so Ino can wander around and observe and at things, and people alike, stare at.

"Daddy," she says, one night, once they're safe at home. She's doing math homework at the kitchen table while he gets supper ready. "Did you see the boy with the pale hair following us today? Daddy?"

"Yes," he says, over the sound of sizzling meat. "I did, yes."

"Before today," she says, "I've seen him too. He's never watched like he did today. Just picked up another student at school, one in a different class than me, but today… today he stared at me, Daddy, and I didn't like it. I'm sorry I didn't mention it before."

"Work on your math," Daddy tells her, after a moment of doing… something… to supper, which she guesses is its own kind of work.

Equations, Ino decides as she goes back to her homework, are super dumb. When she's big she's never doing math again. When she's big, Daddy will tell her if he's going to kill the boy outright. When she's big, he'll probably let her help, like he let her with the mice, the mice, just two weeks ago. Ino sighs hugely. Stupid equations.

Again, two weeks later, the boy is at the mall and he watches her. This time, there's another one with him, a dark-haired one that looks sad and stares at her too. This one, is the one that goes to her school, though they're not in the same grade. Daddy watches them back like something terrible straining against a leash. They go home. She doesn't ask about the boys ever again.

Also, though, she doesn't ask to go to the mall next month. Daddy would probably take her but Ino knows what follows after that, should they just happen to be there also.

Much, much later, years later, she'll regret not going to the mall, but it's complicated too, that regret. Tangled all up around all the ways she's changed and just far too much.

Crying. A girl is crying.

Not her, though, as she sits up, rubbing at her head and wondering what hit her–and oh, Daddy is going to destroy them-part of her wonders if she had been crying before too. Her head feels stuffed and ugly and painful. Still, even if she had, right now, she's not.

Crying girl has pink hair. There's also a fat boy and a glasses boy and a pale girl who looks like she could be made of glass. A cute boy with an empty glare. A blond boy is glaring but there's nothing empty about his furious blue eyes, even with them rimmed in red from, she assumes, past crying.

"What is this?" Ino demands, getting to her feet. "Where are we? What's going on here? Someone tell me the answer to what."

"We don't know," the glasses boy tells her, a frown crossing his face. "We woke up here, like you. Now we…"

Trailing off, he shrugs, like there's no good way to figure out a path through this uncharted territory, no obvious way to wend their way down to something that makes sense instead of dribbling off into nothing. Trailing.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel…

Daddy's favourite fairytale. His most precious spell. If he were here, they wouldn't be here. That's how strong he is, her Daddy.

Since he's not here, then that means until he is, I have to be the one with the magic. This is my fairy tale, which means my spell is being woven, my grimoire being inked and drawn. Her lips tremble. She wants to go home. And no one else is doing anything, so it's got to be me. Someone got to do it. Otherwise, how else will we be okay? Since…

Ruthless, already, at seven—but also only seven—Ino takes stock of the situation and tries the door behind her, the one to presumable freedom (it's locked), observes the way that there's no windows in this lobby-foyer-room, and makes up her mind. If there's no way to get out, then deeper they must go, until she can find someone to shout at until her Daddy finds her. It's got to be up to her, since the rest of them aren't like her, with their tears and their fears and their smallness. She's ruthless.

Kicking and clawing at the door do her no good, though she does until her fingers bleed and her legs shake and her voice is raw from screaming. During that, another boy is brought in, from behind, and the locks clang shut again, before she can bolt—and Ino settles furiously into a rage that leaves her light-headed as she stands and stares and glares. If the force of her mind were anything tangible, she'd still be at the door kicking.

(Later, Orochimaru-Mother-will explain that it is this fury, this will, that is her greatest of gifts. Much, much later.)

For now, Ino waits. There is something they're here for.

She is a Rapunzel locked up in a tower with a heart of razor-blades hidden under her blonde, blonde hair. Daddy's favourite story, a spell all of itself. They are the mice in traps, now, she and the other kids, and she...

Ino is the blood spilled, mice torn apart, men tortured until they're naught but meat swinging senseless upon hooks. She is the fairy tale her daddy has crafted her to be, one of magic and cunning and determination. Where victory is not in the happy ending but in being the last one standing.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. She can hear her daddy reading to her now, and Ino knows she is the silly girl soaked in blood and given knives and that she is to wield the same magic and yet be a different kind of girl from the story-book Rapunzel.

I don't know how it could've ended this way
Smoke billows from my ships in the harbor
People look at me like I'm a monster