"Did you see it?"

Kakashi leaned back against the tree and gave her his well-practiced I-don't-know-you're-talking-about stare.

"You know what I'm talking about. Did you see what she did? With your Sharingan?"

He sighed. It had been so much easier when they were young. It seems they were not so easily fooled as they once were. "It's not something you should take lightly, Sakura."

"You think I'm taking any of this lightly?"

No. Sakura didn't take much lightly these days.

"I'm not the silly girl I was. And I'm no coward, not anymore."

No, she wasn't. But Kakashi wasn't sure he was ready to give her the tools to end her own life, even if it was for a noble cause. "It's a high price to pay."

"I know that. I would give it gladly."

The quiet ferocity in her voice was something he would have to get used to. It made him proud, and sad.

"I'm going to find out, Kakashi, whether you tell me or not. There have to be documents, scrolls, steps she developed for that technique. But if you can help me, then do it."

She turned from him to the darkness in which Naruto had disappeared.

"They're after him. And he's such an idiot. They bait him and he falls for it, every time. But I'm not going to let them have him. They may take that goddamn fox inside him, but they will not take his life. I will not lose him."

"And you think Naruto would let you take his place? That it would hurt him any less to lose you than for you to lose him?"

"Are you saying I'm being selfish?"

Kakashi didn't have an answer. How do you argue self-sacrifice as being selfish? The terms were opposite, yet in some strange way, the same.

"Naruto has to live. He is…needed, somehow. I don't know how to explain it, and it might not make any sense, but I just have this feeling that if we lose Naruto, we lose it all."

"Is it the world that needs Naruto, or just you?"

Sakura didn't answer. Her silence spoke volumes, all the same. "You know I'm right, Kakashi." Her voice was barely a whisper. "So, Copy Ninja, are you going to help me, or not?"

How could three years change so much?

"I saw it."

Sakura smiled softly, taking his simple statement for what it was.

"Sakura."

She paused.

"The world needs you, too. And so does Naruto."

She nodded, and started off into the trees. Of course Naruto needed her. And she promised herself she would be there, ready, at the end, when he needed her the most.