Meme

[tj_dragonblade]

Meme, as lifted from tucuxi:

1. Pick a pairing or a character
2. Ask me my particular head-canon regarding something about them
3. Post to your journal to share your own head-canon

Comments

[tucuxi.livejournal.com]

How old was Yamato when Orochimaru started experimenting on him? What was the rest of his childhood like?

[tj-dragonblade.livejournal.com]

Piecing together shoddy canon and incorporating the anime filler arc that explains Anko's backstory a bit better and more in keeping with the timeline, I've settled on Yamato being...well, anywhere under 3, really. But since they talk about experimenting on 'babies', I'd probably put him somewhere in the 6-12 month range. Although I suppose he could've been a newborn, too. In any case, that means Kabuto was probably stuck with bottle-and-diaper duty, unless they supplied nourishment intravenously, but that still leaves the diaper issue. I imagine, since Orochimaru didn't know he had any survivors from the mokuton experiment, that it couldn't have been too long after starting the experiments that he was forced to abandoned the lab and he village. Which means, thankfully, that Yamato probably doesn't have any conscious memories of that time, but I imagine the trauma surfaces in nightmares periodically. Possibly the timeline could be expanded somewhat if he was subject to other experiments before the mokuton gene-splicing, but I still see the lab being busted by the time he's 18mos at the oldest.

As to the rest of his childhood, it sort of depends. If Orochi left behind enough for them to figure out what he'd been trying to do, and/or if itty-bitty-Yamato was manifesting mokuton abilities even then, I imagine he was probably held in somewhat high regard - Konoha in general seems to have great respect/admiration for Hashirama, and a child who might be considered either a semi-clone or an artificial descendant would likely be treated well. There's also a possible element of making karmic amends for not figuring out sooner what Orochi was up to, taking good care of the one survivor because they were too late for all the ones who died, that kind of thing. Yamato was probably fostered out to a good family (maybe a Sarutobi cousin? Hiruzen has some definite guilt-issues about responsibility for Orochimaru's misdeeds), raised in reasonable comfort, trained early and entered the academy early, the works. I imagine Danzou would have loved to get his hands on him, bring him into Root, and if he'd been in an orphanage Danzou probably would have succeeded, which is why I think he was placed with a family with enough clout to deter Danzou. I'm toying with the idea that he was raised by Hiruzen himself, at least up until he was maybe 12-15 (since the age-of-adulthood seems to be a bit lower than 18 in the shinobi world).

[tucuxi.livejournal.com]

This is awesome, and I think it might end up being my head-canon too, because it makes so much more sense than anything canon has supplied. :)

It would also go a long way toward explaining how someone that potentially fucked in the head ended up coming out more or less functionally sane (at least for a shinobi) for someone of that generation, especially for someone who was promoted so young. A not-just-horrifying childhood would go a long way toward giving him ballast, so to speak. And the idea of him not being in the orphanage (and therefore not in Danzo's grasp) is something I hadn't considered before, but it really rings true.

Yay, head-canon.

[tj-dragonblade.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know a lot of people tend to give him a darker childhood, have him like raised in ANBU as a ward of the state or some-such, almost like a prisoner, kept a secret and all. But it's hard for me to see a past like that resulting in the man he is. And the bit about Danzou and orphanage kids in Kabuto's backstory made me think - if it's that easy for him, he shouldn't have had any trouble getting his hands on Yamato, unless Yamato wasn't readily available in any orphanage. So it all just kind of makes more sense to me this way, yeah. ^_^