Thread:Omega64/@comment-4503935-20190703001710/@comment-10330822-20191226192740

Do you want to see if my opinion has changed? Because it hasn't.

As far as I'm concerned Naruto knew the score exactly as it was. Sakura was motivated by her feelings and wanted to help Naruto after seeing what happened to him after the Sasuke Retrieval mission. After Sasuke fled following the Battle at Tenchi Bridge, Sakura assured Naruto that they would save Sasuke together.

By the time of after Pain's Invasion, I feel nothing about that changed, because honestly they had gotten next to no progress on Sasuke. After finding out that Sasuke had aligned with the Akatsuki and attacked Killer B, you see Naruto trying to distance Sakura from the situation, not necessarily because of guilt or anything, but simply because he didn't want to make her upset. This is the same reason Naruto didn't want Sai to tell Sakura about the beating he got from Karui or him going to apologize to the Raikage, asking him to spare Sasuke, and offer his assistance.

If anything, Sakura's agitation that led her to believe Sai's point-of-view was because she probably felt that way deep down. Of course she was ignorant of Naruto's feelings, but on some level probably already was seeing the nonsensical the possibility of bringing Sasuke back and returning him to the way he was sounded. When before she was very defensive of Naruto's resolve to do so, despite it sounding ridiculous back then as well.

Sakura's guilt I feel was from a place where she already felt the way she did. If anything had changed from my stance on this, is that I blame Sai a bit less than I did before. Because I feel Sakura is not so easily influenced, and the reason she just dumps her trust into what Sai is saying is because deep down she already felt that way. It's like you already feel and think this way, but you push those thoughts to the back of your head rather than analyze them, and then Sai comes along and makes those thoughts real by confronting Sakura directly about the situation.

Still, I think it's still safe to reason why Sakura would question Naruto's motivations so much because she didn't understand how much Sasuke meant to Naruto and what Naruto was going through. This is obviously why Sakura felt she needed to take the burden from Naruto as she thought she was the entire reason he was still motivated to do something about Sasuke.