The Lima Syndrome
By Nocena T. Calamus
Chapter One: Of family and strangers
The clouds that day were so thick that almost no light managed to break through. It was midday, but it was dark enough out there to make any internal clock think it was eight in the evening of a dreary winter day. Darkness and sleepiness didn't contribute to staying alert very long, and an eleven-year-old Sasuke Uchiha was only too aware of that fact. Humidity hung densely in the air, pushing his usually rebellious hair into a droopy fashion; droopy like his very own eyelids in the damp, dark and dreary day...
He caught himself and sat up, thanking his good luck the teacher hadn't noticed his thoughts wandering; it was bad enough that he had only achieved an A in the last assignment, Father would skin him alive if he got word of his son not paying attention. Sasuke tried to at least appear attentive, knowing inside that he would have to revise this lesson from the textbook, perhaps on a sunnier day, because he simply could not help it.
Yeah, he wanted to go home and do nothing productive for a whole day, instead of being in school pretending to listen to an old woman whose name he didn't care to know go on and on about a subject he would probably learn more about when he read the textbook. Days like these were made for staying at home, watching reruns of old shows first aired in the seventies and drinking hot chocolate milk while Mother, seated beside him, explained the show and told nostalgic stories about her childhood; or playing cards with Father and Brother, sitting by the fireplace, listening to Brother’s tales about life at university while Father patted their heads proudly and said how much he loved the both of them…
The bell killed the small smile that had been present upon his face unnoticed while he was daydreaming, reminding him that the cab Father hired for him on rainy days would be waiting outside the school to take him home. That thought brought on a frown as he packed everything into his rucksack. Home... Hn, what a joke. That place was anything but like his romantic delusions: Mother didn't seem to have the time to sit with him and chat anymore, always so busy with work, while Brother wouldn't stand seeing his or Father’s face long enough to play a game of cards. And Father? That man would never tell him how much he loved him for the simple reason that he didn’t.
As his luck would have it, no sooner had he set foot outside the school than it started raining. Desperate for shelter, he searched the street for the cab, but it wasn't there. Perhaps Father has forgotten to send it today? Or perhaps he had forgotten to notice that he had an eleven-year-old son who would be counting on him for shelter. Sasuke’s eyes stung like they usually did when he thought about Father, but he fought the tears. He felt angry enough to throw caution to the wind and decided to walk home in the rain. If he was lucky, he would catch a cold -or better yet, pneumonia- and then maybe Father would notice to remember that he had a younger son and that he was sick because of him.
More that a storm, it seemed he was in the middle of a solar eclipse, and the world looked unusually grey as he started his two-kilometre-long trek home. He lived in a somewhat lowly populated city -was it even big enough to be called a city?- that was more long than wide, so he had to walk for the better part of his journey along the central road. He saw various people trying to hitch a ride and succeeding, since most cars travelled along that road.
Sasuke kept walking, ignoring them, afraid he would he tempted to loose his resolve and ask for a ride like a common peasant. Depending on others to do something that was perfectly within your capabilities was so beneath his upbringing that he didn't even want to imagine what Father would say if he found out. He counted his steps while walking both to keep his mind from thinking and as a way of measuring the distance.
About half-an-hour into his journey, in which he had covered an embarrassingly short seven-hundred metres, he was startled out of his counting by a car honk. He looked around, curious, and found a red jeep with a blond man behind the wheel sitting about a metre or two away. He walked over, mildly annoyed, and was about to ask what the hell he wanted when the other beat him to it.
“Hey, kiddo, want a ride? Nobody should be crazy enough to walk in this maelstrom,” he offered, friendly.
Sasuke stared at him, expressionless, trying not to stare at the odd marks on the man's face and debating whether he was or not cold and wet enough to accept a ride. He wasn’t.
“No, thank you,” he deadpanned, and resumed walking.
Well, he was drenched to the bone and trembling with enough hypothermia to look as if he was having seizures, but walking home in the rain had become a matter of pride, a battle of wills between him and Mother Nature.
He soon heard the wet grinding sound of gravel being driven on, but it continued longer that expected, and he deduced that the jeep had not got on the road. Was it following him? It was, he realised, his annoyance growing. He walked some more and the jeep followed him; his irritation grew proportionately.
“Kiddo,” the man shouted through the open window into the rain. “You sure you don't want a ride?”
Sasuke ignored him and kept walking, his irritation starting to reach boiling point. The sound of a moving car ceased, but then came the noise of a door being slammed closed and footsteps in the gravel.
“Yo, Uchiha! Get in the car, damnit!”
That was it.
Sasuke turned around, gathering air in his lungs to give the idiot of the jeep a piece of his mind, but once again he was beaten to it. The man sounded as angry as he felt.
“You could have made my job easy, but no! Ever the true Uchiha, you just have to be a pain in the ass. Now I'm all wet because of you!”
His job? Sasuke's eyes widened as he was stricken with sudden clarity on the precariousness of his position. He was wet, cold, hungry and eleven, being tailed and confronted by a fully grown man whose job was to get him inside the jeep, to do who-knows-what to him once he had him... He tossed his backpack at the stranger to distract him and started running.
The man caught it, surprised; then he looked up, saw Sasuke fleeing, cursed and ran after him, throwing the backpack to the side. Sasuke, now not caring how cold or wet he was, ran and ran like the devil was behind him, adrenaline fuelling his uncooperative muscles. He wasn't stupid enough to think he could reach his house before the man; what's more, the man probably had accomplices waiting for him there. He spotted a small forest a bit further down the road, probably only fifty metres away. He didn't have time to consider it twice; it was definitely the best option. He ran off to the side of the road and into the woods, desperately hoping to loose the man.
It was weird how it was so dark, especially once under the canopy of the trees, but he only thought about it enough to know that it would help him hide all the better. He ran and ran, but suddenly, the floor under his right foot betrayed him and he fell into the muddy ground. He tried to get up and continue fleeing, but that fall was all his pursuer needed to catch up with him and tackle him face first into the mud, grabbing him by his shoulders and sitting on him.
Sasuke struggled to get free, but realised it was futile and sat still, his heart beating like crazy.
“Well, damn. You needn’t have done that, kiddo,” said the man, all traces of friendliness gone, as soon as he had stopped struggling.
Sasuke took a shaky breath, still scared nearly to death.
“Who are you? What do you want with me?” His voice was so strangled that it was barely past a whisper.
The man laughed, and got off him, still holding one of his wrists.
“What do you think, you idiot? I’m going to take you home!” When Sasuke relaxed, he let go of his arm. “Sorry for scaring you like that, your dad didn’t tell me you were such a scaredy-cat.”
The man offered his hand to help Sasuke up.
Sasuke, who had finally calmed down, was feeling stupid for assuming that the man was out to kidnap him, of all things, but also somewhat happy at the man’s words. So Father hadn’t forgotten to send a car after all! He ignored the man’s offered hand and tried to get up by himself, but as soon as he stepped onto his right foot, he fell again in pain.
“Here kiddo, lemme help you,” the man said, kneeling on the mud with his back to Sasuke, who stared at it for a while before understanding what exactly the man was expecting him to do.
Sasuke blushed, embarrassed that his pride had been wounded and would be again, but he managed to push that aside long enough to climb onto the stranger’s back as he had seen children do with their parents so many times. Father had never given him a piggy-back ride, so the experience was new to him.
Sasuke put his arms around the blond man’s neck as best he could and held on tightly as his ride stood up. He slipped a little; his carrier put his own hands under his bottom to hold him in position and then started walking. Sasuke was rocked with each step; his front, bum and inner thighs were warm from the man’s body warmth. He had never quite understood why children liked being carried like this -it looked so undignified!- but now he could see why. It was very comfortable and warm, and he could only wish it was Father this broad and muscled back belonged to and not a stranger. He felt the urge to cry again, and laid his head on the man’s shoulder.
“So, why were you walking in the rain?” said the man, and Sasuke heard more the reverberation of the words inside his chest that the actual words.
“I wanted to show Father I could do it, so he would be proud of me,” he answered somewhat sleepily.
The man hummed noncommitantly and kept walking. They hadn’t run far into the forest, so the road was close. Sasuke waited for the man to say something, but he kept quiet, so he decided to speak himself.
“What’s your name?”
The man stood still for a second, and then kept walking, now along the road and towards the red jeep. Once out of the canopy of the forest, rain poured thickly on them, but Sasuke still warm and comfortable and fast approaching sleep.
“There’s no need for you to know,” said the man, softly. “You will forget it by tomorrow, just like you dad did.”
Sasuke did not answer, sleepy as he was. The world tilted and he opened his eyes to see that they had reached the red vehicle and that the man was waiting for him to get off him and inside it. Sasuke didn’t want to leave the warmth he was emitting and protested, but the man took him from his back and placed him carefully on the passenger seat, placing the seatbelt around him. He closed the door, picked up Sasuke’s discarded backpack and got inside the jeep too, throwing it onto the backseat.
Then he started the jeep and got it on the road. Sasuke was fully awake now, and trembling. It was chilly inside the car, so he asked the man to start the heating. Apparently, it was broken, because he only chuckled, reached back into the backseat, dragged out a heavy coat and put it on Sasuke. They drove in silence, chilled and wet.
The coat was dusty, and it made Sasuke sneeze. The man beside him sighed and shook his head sadly.
“Something must be very wrong with the world if a child needs to walk two kilometres in the rain to make his father proud of him.”
Sasuke’s eyes stung again and he looked out the window so the man wouldn’t see. He sat up straighter when he didn’t recognise the scenery.
“This is not the way to my house,” he informed the driver calmly.
The man smirked and the marks on his cheeks deepened, giving him a feral look. Sasuke’s earlier panic returned, and his heart beat fast as the man looked at him out of the corner of his eye.
“And what made you think I was really taking you home? Didn’t your mom teach you not to trust strangers?”
Sasuke looked down into his lap and contemplated jumping out of the car while it was moving, trying to calculate whether he would or not remain living after hitting the floor. He was reaching for the seatbelt lock when a hand grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” the man said, his voice both a threat and a warning, without taking his eyes off the road.
Sasuke relented, biding his time, and as soon as the man let go of his arm, he resumed trying to free the seatbelt while opening the door. The man stopped the car in the middle of the road and grabbed his throat with his hand, putting pressure on it.
“Don’t even think about it,” he whispered ferally into his ear, all traces of friendliness gone.
The hand that wasn’t around his neck shifted and covered his mouth and nose, pushing until the back of his head hit the windowpane. Sasuke tried to breathe, but his mouth and nose were covered by what felt like raw meat – impossible to breath around. He tried to push his head to the side, but the man's grip was unrelenting. He was suffocating; he needed to get loose soon or else... He struggled, moving as much and as unpredictably as he could in the man’s hold, but the weight pushing him down was huge and heavy and immovable, and he was feeling light-headed. His eyes had stopped working and he stopped fighting to get free, realising it was futile. All he could think about as he lost consciousness was how happy Brother would be and how Father would not care at all about his death… And then he fainted.
End of Chapter One.
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Story notes: The “Lima Syndrome” does not belong to me. Oh, and neither does Naruto -- he belongs to Sasuke.
This fic was born out of my frustation. I mean, why do kidnappers always ASSUME people are gonna pay the ransom for the hostage? Honestly. And in the case someone didn't pay it, what would the kidnapper do with the hostage? Kill him/her like they threatened? Sell him/her to a prostitution circle? As a sex slave?
Well, this is what I would do.
Chapter notes: The Lima Syndrome is considered by many to be the opposite of the Stockholm Syndrome. Unlike the Stockholm Sydrome, where hostages develop sympathy for their abductor, the Lima Syndrome happens when it is the kidnapper who becomes more sympathetic to the plights and needs of their hostages.
The name comes from the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis of 1996 in Lima, Peru, where members of a MRTA guerrillas (a militant movement) took hostage hundreds of people attending a party in the official residence of Japan's ambassador to this country. Within a few days, they set free most of the hostages, including the most valuable ones.
But of course, this was your homework to do. Bad readers, shame on you! Making the author explain everything...
Flames tolerated, reviews wanted, criticism craved.
Nocena T. Calamus
Chapter end notes: Snippet from Chapter Two: Of Shackles Concrete and Abstract
Sasuke sobbed louder and scrunched his eyes shut as his wet shirt was peeled off, the man’s hands grazing his chest, sliding across his shoulders and slithering down his arms and back. He knew what came next: the pants and underwear, and he didn’t feel like being naked in front of this man at all. Crying, he held onto the fly of his pants with both hands, trying to prevent the inevitable.