Hey, it's a new story! Charlie has a list about Strausser. It's different.

Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.

This chapter may contain potentially triggering content for some readers, as it contains sexual content of extremely dubious consent levels.

- o – o -

Of Another Great Shame

Charlie knows she's in trouble when her cell door swings open to admit Sergeant Strausser. She presses her back against the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest. If she's a small target, it'll be harder for him to cause any damage to her. Just in case, she laces her fingers over the back of her neck and buries her face in her knees. The young woman wishes she was wearing her clothes, instead of the tiny shift she has on. It hides nothing.

"Hello Charlotte," Strausser says, kneeling down in front of her. "We're going to be very good friends…" He pries Charlie's face up and presses an insistent kiss on her mouth. Charlie jerks her head back and spits in his face, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as a look of disgust curls over her features. She might have to endure the kiss, but there's no way in hell she's going to let him use his tongue. (Which, by the way, has always been disgusting. Charlie's tried before, with boys in the village and a few rebel boys—it's just…ew. Like eating a worm, except the worm had nutritional value and Danny had dared her to eat it.)

Strausser slaps her, making her head snap to the side. When Charlie lifts a hand to touch the bruise, blue eyes wide, the man grabs her wrist and hauls her upright. There's a dangerous look in his dark blue eyes.

"If you ever spit in my face again…" he threatens.

Charlie kicks him between the legs, trods on his face as she runs for the door, and makes it halfway down the corridor before he recovers.

"You'll have to kill me first," Charlie tells him sweetly when he asks if she'll reconsider being stubborn. He knocks her out.

Charlie wakes up in his apartment. She's tied spread-eagled to his bed, and her clothes are missing. The young woman catalogues everything she can see or hear—or smell. Her stomach growls as the smell of beef stew hits her nose. It's the one thing she and Danny agreed on all the time when they were growing up—beef stew was the best thing in the world, and they'd eat it by the bucketful if they could. (It was a rare treat, because beef was so expensive. If she brought down a buck, the village could pretend it was beef, even though everyone knew it wasn't.)

Strausser leaves her tied there, and Charlie closes her eyes, practicing the same breathing exercises Maggie taught Danny when she'd joined them. It works. A little. It definitely helps when Strausser comes in much later that night, strips his clothing off with methodical efficiency, and curls up next to her on the bed. Charlie goes through the times tables she never had time for as a child as Strausser wraps his arms around her, head resting between her breasts. (It helps deal with her urge to laugh, because hey, the psychotic torturer likes to cuddle! Which is…still creepy. Incredibly creepy. And hey, Strausser likes cuddling!)

Charlie wonders if it says something about her mental state that she prefers Strausser cuddling her to him actually doing anything else. He's…cordial, almost, after spending the night curled up around her like she's a human-sized Charlie-shaped teddy bear. He still doesn't untie her, unless it's to let her hobble to the bathroom to clean up and use the chamber pot. Charlie gets used to their morning routine as well, even though she's still planning on ways to kill him as soon as she's got free range of motion again.

It takes two weeks before he lets her walk around his apartment on a lead tied to her ankle. Charlie uses her newfound freedom to take one of his shirts from the dresser, tired of being naked. It's long enough to cover everything—unless she bends over, in which case it becomes obscene and far too revealing to be comfortable. And, coward that she's turning out to be, she refolds it as quickly as possible and shoves it back in the dresser when she sees him coming up the walk to the building.

As her luck would have it, Strausser is also obsessive about tiny details. He doesn't cuddle her after that, and Charlie finds herself missing the cuddling when he ties her to one of the posts at the end of his bed in a very uncomfortable position. (Of course, given the fact that she attacked him with a knife when he told her she was going to be punished for rifling through his things, she has to admit that she might deserve this…just a little. Maybe?)

Three days later, Strausser finally decides she's been punished enough and releases her from her bonds. Charlie sags into his arms, whimpering in pain as the blood rushes back to her hands and feet in painful white-hot pinpricks that make it uncomfortable to walk or use her hands.

She sits at the table in his sparse kitchen, staring at her hands.

"S…Sergeant Strausser?" Charlie whispers, voice soft and raspy from disuse. He hums to show he's listening. Charlie pushes on. "C…could I…" She trails off, and clears her throat nervously. "I…I want somewhere that…that you w-won't…touch me. I-if…if that's alright…?"

Charlie hates herself for stuttering, for showing any sign of weakness around him. She tries to pretend that the fear creeping into her voice is an act—one that she's using to lull her captor into a false sense of security. Strausser looks up from the stove where he's making a second perfect omelet, eyebrows raised. He smiles after a few seconds.

"Of course, Peaches."

The young woman eats the omelet in silence, after murmuring a sincere thank-you. And, as much as she hates to admit it, the man is a really good cook.

He gives her the smaller of two closets in his bedroom. It's more of a crawlspace, and there's no window or any way to lock the door from the inside, but it's the only place he'll give her. Charlie keeps the disappointment off her face, and pushes the thin pallet into the cupboard just in case she wants to take a nap while he's in the apartment and not have to be afraid of…him.

She spends the next half hour in the room, using a flashlight—one with real batteries, which Strausser won in a draw for the goodies that General Monroe, General Matheson, and Captain Baker had secured in a successful war against Georgia. (It wasn't a war, she thinks snidely as she chews on the end of her pencil, it was a slaughter.) On the wall, in her neat, careful handwriting, is a list of everything that's just plain weird about Sergeant Strausser.

He likes cuddling. He's a real "Southern Gentleman" if he gets drunk enough, going so far as to give her clothing and calling her "Miss Charlotte". He likes eating peaches—and Charlie's a bit worried about just what in the hell he means by calling her "Peaches" all the time. He's a really good cook. If he's drunk beyond the "Southern Gentleman" state, he recites Whitman and Wodehouse in a posh British accent that would have made Maggie cringe until he passes out on the floor, drunk. The final note on her list—which Charlie is pretty sure will never be complete—is that he really likes rose-scented soap.

(The man is, in a nutshell, strange.)

Everything settles back into a routine, of sorts, for the next few days. By Charlie's best estimate, she's been Strausser's captive for about…four weeks, maybe. She's been a captive of the Monroe Republic for almost seven weeks. Two months of being in hell, and there's no way out—unless she wants to kill herself. (Which isn't an option, because that would leave Danny—wherever he's being held—defenseless and without a single friendly face in the world.)

By the end of her fifth week with Strausser, Charlie's gained her freedom. And clothes. Clothes are the most important part of the escape plan she's been working on for the past few weeks—she'd take Strausser's clothing, but she's a bit small and too short for them to fit properly. She doesn't like the summer dresses he gives her (they're all peach-colored, and she's begun to hate anything related to peaches), but she's grateful for the shorts and tank tops. They're not much, and they barely cover everything, but they're still better than the summer dresses. She climbs out the window and down the wall—one of Danny's favorite tricks to get out from under their dad's paranoid, overprotective gaze.

She makes it to the end of the street before one of the guards on the building catches her. Charlie makes him work for his prize. She ends up getting dragged back to Strausser's apartment, half-conscious and bleeding from a bad cut on her forehead. Charlie's done just as much damage to the guard who caught her. The guard on the building—the one who's supposed to prevent people from entering who aren't supposed to be there (or to keep people like her in)—wraps his hands around her throat and slams her into the wall until she's too dazed to do anything to resist. He drags her up three flights of stairs, bruising grip on her arm never letting up.

As soon as he's locked her back in the apartment, Charlie crawls into her cupboard and curls up against the back wall, hugging her knees to his chest. The bruises around her neck hurt. A few hours later, Strausser comes back.

"Come here, Peaches…" Strausser calls out. "Come out…"

Charlie's hands tighten over her mouth and her jaw sets in a stubborn line as she presses herself further into the depths of the closet. She hates the nickname. She hates the man who gave it to her. She hates her mother, she hates her uncle's former friends, but mostly… Mostly, she just hates Sergeant Strausser.

The girl stays where she's been hiding for the last three hours. It's not a very good hidey-hole, but she had managed to wrangle a promise out of Strausser that she could have one place where he would never touch her. The closet is her haven, small as it is. She's never had a serious need for it until today, sadly.

To say that Strausser scared her was an understatement of impressively large proportions. She liked him when he was drunk enough to pass out, because he was…kind, if that was the word for it. He was gone most of the day, and that gave her a sense of security that had, unfortunately, proved fatal… Now…

"Oh Peaches…"

Charlie bites down on her wrist to muffle a sob of fear and presses herself closer to the back wall of the cubby as she hears Strausser's footsteps getting louder. He knows about her hiding space. If she hides from him for too long in there, he makes it painful for her when she finally crawls out. (She's learned that the hard way, and has tried to learn how to keep him from getting violent instead.)

The closet door opens with a bang, and Strausser's there, leering at her. Charlie lets go of her wrist and scowls up at him, eyes dark with hatred and barely-contained fury. She has bruises ringing her throat, or she'd insult him as best she could. Danny had a never-ending supply of snarky retorts, and she's picked up a few of the best. The young woman thinks it's a pity she can't use any of them.

"Why are you hiding from me, Peaches?" Strausser asks softly, crouching down so he's eye-level with her. He smiles, a disarmingly charming expression for a complete psychopath. When he's pretending to be nice—that is, when he's not drunk—it's almost believable. Strausser has that kind of face. He makes you want to trust him… Except that trusting him is like trusting a hungry wolf. It might look nice, but they're still hungry and you're the closest thing to food they've seen in a while. (Except this time, Charlie realizes bitterly, she doesn't have her crossbow and there's no avenue of escape.)

Charlie flinches as Strausser stands up. She whimpers a little when he smiles, which just makes his smile even wider.

"Since you like hiding in here so much, Peaches," Strausser says, one hand on the door, "I guess I'll just let you stay here." He slams the door shut, and Charlie hears something heavy scraping along the floor.

Her relief that he's leaving her alone, letting her stay in her safe haven, only lasts for an hour. She can smell food cooking, and she doesn't eat unless Struasser is there—which isn't very often, if she has to be honest. Charlie tries the door, only to find it's been locked or something's been shoved against it to keep it closed. Charlie begins slamming against the door in a panic, pulse hammering in her temples. She doesn't do well in small places.

Charlie had asked her captor for a place where she could be sure he wouldn't touch her—for a minute, for an hour, for a day—she'd hoped for somewhere with a window. She…she really doesn't like small, dark spaces. It spooks her something bad. There's no window, it's dark, she doesn't have her flashlight, and the space is beginning to seem smaller and smaller as the minutes drag on.

The young woman slammed against the door repeatedly for several long minutes, before she slides down it, sobbing as she realizes Strausser won't come to let her out of the dark. Charlie's tiny haven is becoming a nightmare. She pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them, lacing her fingers over the back of her head.

When they'd been growing up on the road and in Sylvania Estates, Danny had been her responsibility. She'd picked up a few tricks along the way from watching Maggie help Danny with his asthma attacks. Watching him had given her own reserves of patience, and a good memory for what Maggie had told Danny to do during an attack so he'd calm down long enough to drink the medicine she made—which did, Charlie admits, look really nasty. She begins taking deep, even breaths through her nose, measuring each one carefully to stave off a panic attack.

It works for the first day, and then the walls close in again.

By the end of the second day, Charlie's sobbing again and scratching at the door with chipped, bloody nails, begging to be let out. She chews her nails down to the nubbins, trying not to start screaming again as the walls seem to melt around her, trapping her here in the dark forever.

On the third, she's listless and curled up on her pallet, whimpering as the walls creak and shift around her with each movement of the old building. She wishes the building would collapse so she could just get out of here.

By the end of the fourth, her mind is creating shadows and phantoms. She hasn't had food or water in three days. Hallucinations should be setting in any second, the more rational, clinical part of her mind tells her. Charlie sobs into her hands to muffle the noise when she realizes that part of her mind sounds just like Maggie. By the end of day five in the closet, Charlie's too hoarse and too dehydrated to scream or—even worse—beg Strausser to let her out. She's too weak to beg him to let her out, to tell him that she swears she'll be good if he just opens the door for her.

It takes a week for Strausser to let her out.

"Come here, Peaches," the man says, kneeling down. Charlie crawls out of the space, tears of humiliation running down her cheeks as she collapses into his arms, mewling for his touch. He picks her up, cradling her oh-so-gently against his chest, and carries her to the bathroom, where he strips her of her clothing.

Charlie hisses in pain as he deposits her in a tub of water that's so hot it's almost boiling, but relaxes as he begins massaging the kinks out of her back and shoulders. He even washes the grime and filth out of her hair.

The water gets changed four times before Charlie's clean again. Strausser towels her off gently, lingering a bit too long on her thighs and her hips, but Charlie's exhausted and tired and scared. She doesn't care, not anymore, that Strausser is the enemy. She doesn't want her haven anymore. Charlie's not sure if she'll ever be able to stand the dark again—or the lack of touch and human contact.

Sergeant Strausser is gentle with her after that. He's being gentle beyond what Monroe's two rules regarding her treatment—"no permanent damage" and "don't kill her"—have him under orders for. Charlie curls up against one arm of the sofa, staring drowsily at the fire. The shirt she's wearing is just long enough to be modest, but short enough to be obscene. The sleeves drape over her hands, and she has to keep pushing them up. She's got a mug of soup, but she's too tired to try and finish it.

Charlie knows he's breaking her. She knows he's doing a damn good job of it too. Torture, unbalance the captive, treat them nicely, beat them, go back to being nice, and keep them unbalanced…until they do whatever they're told to do. She's due for a beating soon, then.

Stockholm Syndrome. It's insidious, and she has no way to escape it.

The young woman knows that that's what's happening to her too. She doesn't care.

She can't bring herself to care anymore. She just wants Strausser to stop beating her.

Strausser sits down next to her on the sofa, cushions dipping beneath his weight. He groans happily and stretches out like some giant cat. Charlie scoots back against her end of the sofa a little more, knees drawn up to her chest. The sergeant gives her a look that makes her relax—if she doesn't, she'll get beaten, locked back in the closet that had been her haven, or both. None of the options are good.

Charlie flinches as he pulls the buttons on the shirt open, unable to stop a whimper of fear.

"Shhhhhhh… It's alright, Peaches," he croons, rubbing the side of her face with his free hand as he continues to undo the buttons, revealing yards of pale skin, bruised and un-bruised, to his hungry gaze. "It's alright." Charlie hates herself for melting into his touch, hates herself for arching up with a moan of pleasure as his thumb and mouth graze over her nipples.

The young woman forces herself to relax and think of someone—anyone—else as Strausser's fingers trail over her skin, dancing lightly enough to make her gasp and squirm and giggle as he hits sensitive spots. His lips follow after, and Charlie hates herself for arching up into his mouth and touch.

She knows she's lost as he takes her, gently, on the sofa in front of the fireplace. When she wakes up in the morning, she can have a pity-fest. She can scrub and scrub and scrub until her skin peels off, but it's not going to change anything.

In the morning, she's still going to hate herself. She's still going to be a captive in the Monroe Republic. And she's still going to have Stockholm Syndrome.

Charlie hopes it's possible to die of shame or humiliation.

Because she's beginning to like Strausser's touch.

She can kill him later.

Maybe.

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Am I torturing Charlie too much/more than Danny? Drop a line and let me know.