Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo or any of its affiliated characters, which belong to Manglobe/Shimoigusa Champloos. Also, I should in all fairness give the Cowboy Junkies a credit here, owing to writing this while obsessively listening to The Trinity Session.
A/N: One translation of 'jin' is compassion. Spoilers for series.
Jin
Dead smiles like every friend he's ever had. Dead is the man who gives him his sake when he shoves a couple monme across the counter. Dead is the grass under his feet before he tips himself overoverover backwards off that cliff in Satsuma, and then dead is like flying.
He was surprised (though not really) at how good it felt.
Dead is why the other man drives him crazy, like one of the songs from Ryukyu when it crawls into his head and refuses to move. The other man, fine and educated as he is, just doesn't get it; when he flickers blue and silent, turning walking talking into broken sacks of meat, thinking nothing of it, the other man's wrong even if he's supposed to be the smart one.
He knows better and he knows dead is waiting for them all; he's just the road the poor sad sons of bitches take to get there. Dead is waiting for him too, but not yet — dead always spits him back and he wonders why when he can't sleep. He sort of wants to kill the other man just to show him he is not any better than dead, because dead doesn't give a shit whose mon is on the shroud. He sort of wants to teach the other man dead too, though, so he doesn't try as hard as he could.
Dead isn't easy to learn (but sometimes it teaches itself to you, fast, and there's no getting around that when it does), he knows.
Dead is why he follows the girl, even though he'd never tell her, because sometimes when he teases her about the sunflower samurai, the moment in her eyes hints that she knows dead too before her open door closes. Dead was waiting for her too, it turned out; the man who was in love with dead made of her father a real sunflower samurai, opening him up in roses to the sky, before he chased her to that Satsuma cliff.
He almost wasn't given back (if he was; he couldn't quite tell where he was looking any more), that time.
Dead is why she cried, he knows. Dead is why he woke once, that week following, to find himself leaning on her while she washed his wounds clean; dead is why he let himself slip down into the dark again while she did it.
He knows dead isn't where he's going (bird swimming backwards through sky of water), just yet.
Dead is why he loves the girl, even though he'd never tell her, because she carries his fear for him and he carries her strength for her. Dead is why they are pieces of a whole, and dead, he knows he'll follow her again.