#;; i coulda sworn i made a post about this lready

[uzumakichcined]

Headcanon - Views of the Body and Unhealthy Attachments

Karin is someone who suffers from severe Separation Anxiety.

Ever since she was a child, Karin had to continuously be on the move with her mother and father as a direct result of the Uzumaki clan being hunted down and killed in fear of their power. This resulted in Karin's life from the time she was a baby to a child being on the run, moving from place to place without a home to truly call her own.

At a young age, she had watched her father be taken from them, never to be seen again, leaving Karin with only her mother. The two of them continued to flee from village to village until she was able to find a more stable home in Kusagakure where they were set up outside of the village in a small hut that could barely be considered a stable home.

Due to everything that happened to them in their travels Karin had become very attached to her mother, and would often cling to her and wait outside their home on the border of the plot of land they were given every day. Waiting. Waiting. Hoping and praying to whatever may be watching out over them that her mother would come home again.

When the day came that she didn't return home and the men of the village came for her, Karin could only assume the worst. Tearing herself away from their grasp as she saw her mother's arm fall from a stretcher. Karin pulled the sheet off to see the gruesome sight.

Eaten Alive.

Taken for everything she was worth. Karin nearly threw up then and there, sobbing and crying as she was dragged away from her mother's corpse and forced into work. The first day was the worst, men, women, and anyone who was injured grabbed her like a piece of meat and bit every inch of skin they could manage to heal themselves.

Day after day it was like this, for who knows how long. Karin certainly didn't. One of the first lessons she had learned from this village, was that the human body was just meat. An object one could trade, sell, pawn off, and used for other people's wants and desires. There was nothing special about her, she was meat that had to be passed around, and slowly her own view of humanity would twist to adopt this viewpoint.

It isn't until she is found by Orochimaru, not soon after The Forest of Death incident that she finds that next person to attach to.

He had sought her out, whispers of a red-haired child who might be from the Uzumaki clan? There was no way to really tell until he went to see for himself. Once he was able to track her down Karin had all but gone with him willingly. Hoping that she would escape the torment that she was forced to endure by Kusagakure.

In some ways she was correct, she was not entirely forced to do her work with Orochimaru, but in other ways she was. Her skills were needed, and her healing ability was something that could be extremely useful to their cause.

But there was an underlying care under it all. They gave her a bed, a place where she could do whatever she wanted. Ensuring that she wasn't pushed beyond the means she could handle. Given rest and time to relax and learn? Teaching her? That was also new, as Kusagakure never thought to give her any real formal education, but here this organization was giving her everything a child might need. The education she severely lacked and the place to grow her skills.

Karin would flourish, and with that so would her loyalty and devotion. Without even knowing it, Karin would view Kabuto as a mentor, and Orochimaru a pseudo-parent who she strived to earn praise from. Dedicated now to his cause for everything he had done, the years went on, and this attachment would only grow further with every reward, praise, and affection he would give her. There was no greater loyalty than a child to their parent, and for all purposes that Karin could consider Orochimaru had done more than her blood ties ever had.

That was until he was killed. Karin couldn't grapple with it, and her whole life was once more robbed from her and sent spiraling into an abyss she couldn't escape. Not once, but now twice was her family ripped from her hands and she needed that strong presence in her life. She needed a purpose. It was then when Sasuke came to her, and insisted he needed her skills. A purpose, a need, she wasn't going to be cast out again and thrown to the animals that humans proved themselves to be.

So came her next unhealthy attachment. After suffering through the abandonment of the most important figures in her life she was unstable and only one person was there to cling to. What was she to do? Try and position herself where she could, be a valuable asset, perhaps try and use any method she could to secure a place by his side so then she wouldn't be thrown away again. After all, her body was nothing special, once more she was a piece of meat offered to the strongest warrior. Only now, she could manipulate it and position herself in a place to be more valuable and not discarded.

But as before; it would prove to all be for naught. When betrayed and stabbed through her heart she would find this reality crumble. Struggling to grasp what to do with herself now. Captured and abandoned once more Karin stayed in the village despite the fact she could easily have escaped at any moment with her lock-picking set. What was the point of it anymore? Now that Sasuke made it clear she was unneeded, and Orochimaru was dead. . . All she could do was wait.

Until she found them again. Finding Sasuke she had gone there to give him a piece of her mind, but her unstable mental break from all the abandonment she suffered caused her irrational and flustered mind to reel. Only then noticing that Orochimaru was back. Somehow, and that stable presence he offered helped keep her calm once more, just as it had before.

No longer was she abandoned, but she was finally found once more. Proceeding the war, she would still follow Orochimaru back to his hideout, finding her loyalty to him being far greater than Sasuke or any other. He offered her a home once more and she would gladly accept it. Rebuilding the family she had once had kept her stable and sane, level-headed even with her flaring outbursts of anger from time to time. It was this dynamic she had working for Orochimaru that provided the most stability for her and something that would persist over the continued years ahead.