A/N: Sooo… I was a lazy bum and had only read up to chapter 460 in Naruto. Then people on the internet told me that the latest chapters include zombie!Hashirama and Madara being a psycho with Kabuto, so I swore loudly and began to read.

Got to the love confession of Sakura, yadda yadda yadda… wait, did Naruto just turn down a girlfriend to chase some (albeit devilishly pretty) dude who hates his guts? Deary me, I thought to myself, this demands analysis. And then I read a little more, and there was snow and Sai actually interpreting people. Fic was needed. So, have my take on chapter 474, obsession and love. The psychological fic machine strikes again!

There is a day in the snow when the world shatters under Naruto, breaking like a distorted mirror, like the sheet of glass over a treasured picture, like a child's heart.

There is a day in the snow when the girl he loves tells him lies, and the stone-faced spy he so long resented presents him with the truth. There is a day when the whole shinobi world unites to protect him, save for the one person he wants by his side.

It is a strange day, although any day when Sai had to explain human motivation to Naruto would be strange. The snow falling in thick white flakes obscures the horizons of the world, muffling sound, staining Naruto's cheeks red and lending a burning, pale-blue glow to his eyes.

Sai tells him that Sakura means to kill their former teammate, and in that moment Naruto realizes the exquisite weakness of his own soul, the place in his heart that will mean his death, some day, or his redemption.

He had always thought himself strong, this golden, scruffy boy from the heart of Konoha's contradictory whole. He had always known that he was strong; had not he lived through betrayal and doubt and exclusion and loss, only to rise again, more determined than before? He knows his strength; it is the one thing Naruto has not doubted, not since his academy days when the world still rejected him.

But here, here is a crossroads in time where Sakura, girl of the crushes and shrieking and willingness to hold back from a fight, Sakura who (he thought) has only become strong to chase a boy she wanted; Sakura has bested him.

"She is willing to kill what she loves," says Sai, the enigmatic, oracular messenger, and Naruto is stunned to silence.

Sakura is prepared to give up the dream she has chased for so long in the name of the shinobi world, in the name of Konoha, in the name of peace. And he, Naruto, future Hokage, messiah with a message of sacrifice and unity; he cannot let go.

Does he love Sasuke more than Sakura does? No, no. They both love their broken, brilliant Uchiha, precisely because he is theirs. And their love is not so different, whatever trappings the world frames it in, whatever kind of passion colors it.

It is not love, or lack of it, that has tipped the scales in this measurement of strength and sacrifice. It is need. Naruto needs Sasuke, needs him now more than ever, while Sakura is just awakening to the fact that she does not require any handsome, elusive boy to be herself, and never has.

Naruto is a boy, a young man, of many ideals. His dreams are myriad; they encompass the whole world. But without Sasuke, they will all come down. Without Sasuke, he is nothing, and the battles he has won are empty victories against shadows in a dead land, robbed of all significance.

Sasuke, you see, is proof. If Naruto can win him back, if Naruto can pull even that tangled, revenge-driven soul out of the darkness, then his ideals are not mere charismatic luck; they are reality. If Naruto can get Sasuke back as his rival, as his friend, then it is proof that love can triumph over hatred, that the bonds of a shinobi can outlast any feud, that Naruto is not just a foolish boy chasing after fleeting, fanciful hope.

Saving Sasuke from darkness is proof that Konoha was not built in vain. And Naruto will fight for that proof to his last breath, to his last drop of blood. He would rather die than admit that some people will never be saved, because that conviction is himself, down to the center, to the core.

The murder of Sasuke Uchiha would be Sakura's emancipation; for Naruto, such an act would be the chains which imprison him forever within doubt.

And so it is that a few words from porcelain-composed Sai in the snow break Naruto Uzumaki easier than any trial he has ever faced. The boy who convinced a potential savior that his message brought only terror to the earth, the boy who fought Gaara of the Desert without fear and has faced death a thousand times; that boy cannot bear to hear a condemnation of the madman whom he loves.

Sakura had no self to offer when she begged Sasuke to stay. She was a creature of adolescent wants and with little understanding of the depths of lust and hatred. Now, she is a young woman ready to kill one dream for the sake of chains removed.

Naruto, who has plenty of self, enough to give the whole world his affection, enough to compare with the chakra of Kyuubi or the hatred of an abandoned, betrayed Uchiha; he has offered every ounce of it to Sasuke.

He has taken his resentment, his anger, his sympathy, his admiration and his devotion and set them on the altar which is Sasuke's place inside his heart. If Sasuke traded his body to Orochimaru in the name of power, Naruto has presented his a hundred times for Sasuke's sake. Beat me, hurt me, give me the hatred which you bear to him and lay it out in marks upon my skin; this he has said, this he has endured.

Everything; everything for Sasuke.

But Sakura cannot be seen to outweigh him in this balance of strength; his loyalty cannot be doubted by those who do not understand the ties between Sasuke and Konoha, between peace and reconciliation. The idea that the two of them would be partners in regaining the Uchiha, the faded photograph of a happy (or at least peaceable) Team 7 with all the future before them, together… it is a lie, now. This day has proven that.

So, under a white, white sky before the eyes of his two remaining teachers and Gaara of the Desert (who has grown to love him, as Sasuke has not) Naruto pledges to do what must be done. He says the words with his head bowed, with his voice low, yet that does not lessen the weight of them. Words are words, and he knows that every argument for Sasuke's death is reasonable and just.

But in his heart, Naruto knows the price. All his dreams shatter if Sasuke is unsalvageable. All his hopes come crashing down if this one task is impossible, if this one promise cannot be kept, even for the sake of the shinobi world.

Of course, there is hope. Naruto might be able to win Sasuke over, still. But the chance is slim, and the payment for failing is all he has, all he is.

And that; that is as it should be. Naruto Uzumaki has offered every passion of his heart and every pain of his body to the boy he loves. If his self and his dreams and his soul must go as well, so be it. He can do nothing less.