She wasn't acting right. Not that she ever truly DID act like a normal woman. She wasn't acting right for herself. Jin watched Fuu move around the small room they had scraped enough money around to rent out. He continued to sharpen his sword, eyes lowered slightly so she couldn't see him watching. Mugen had taken the early shift as a guard for a bank. He would be taking the midnight shift which didn't start for another half an hour or so. So much the better. He doubted the other even realized Fuu wasn't behaving normally. If it didn't involve tassles or bouncing tits, Mugen wouldn't notice it.

There was a clatter as Fuu dropped the cooking pot on the floor. Jin's frown grew deeper. It wasn't uncommon for the girl to drop things. But to not even rant about it being the pots fault... that wasn't like ehr at all. He stopped sharpening his sword to watch her full out as she quickly righted the pot and put it over the fire before adding the stale sake they had left and some ugly little dried mushrooms she'd found on the side of the road. She hadn't told them what she was doing, simply went over and quietly picked the mushrooms out of the grass before stuffing them into a little pack and walking on.

He went over the events of that day, trying to find anything that would have made her upset enough not to speak. Nothing. Mugen had been his usual disgusting self, but even he (as callous as he was) hadn't tried speaking a word to her. His memory flashed back on a body lying on top of Fuu, her knife protruding from his neck. Surely she wasn't still... No, that made sense. Fuu was the type to let something like the death of the man trying to rape her effect her. Damn it...

If there was one thing he was beginning to value in life, it was how truly kind Fuu was. He would never think of her as a lover, but she had become, dare he say it, a friend. One he would kill for to see that she was always smiling. If the bastard who took her smile hadn't been dead already, he would have been now. Jin slid his sword back home in it's sheath a bit more roughly than usual, making her look up with big brown eyes. She wasn't very skilled at hiding her emotions. He'd seen the internal agony just as clearly as if she'd given voice to it. This had to stop. If she continued dwelling on the event, it would destroy her.

"Do you understand that it was him or you?" he asked softly, keeping her eyes locked with his.

Fuu hugged herself closely, biting her lower lip. She nodded once.

"Then why do you persist in punishing yourself for staying alive?"

"Killing's bad," she whispered, tears slipping free to fall on her kimono. "I'm a bad person."

"No, you're not. You will never be a bad person, Fuu."

The look she gave him was of someone dangerously close to being lost in their depression. He hoped that since he couldn't save her with his sword, perhaps he could with his words. "How do you know? You made the choice to kill someone, and now look."

"No, I chose to live. There are different types of killing. There are those who kill for greed or for their own sick pleasure. Those are the bad people. Then, there are those like you who kill to keep from being killed by the bad people. These are the good people."

"There's nothing good about killing," she insisted.

"Not in the act itself, no. But in the motives behind it, sometimes it is."

Fuu closed her eyes, shoulder shaking as she finally cried. "What if I turn into one of those bad people?"

Jin remained where he knelt, hands resting on his thighs. "You won't. That's not who you are. You're the kind who should rise above this. True, you took a life. But the authorities said he'd taken the lives of fourteen other women. He would have made you his fifteenth. Is the life you took, the one who commited these atrocities, really worth the tears you're shedding?"

She was watching him now, eyes dry, lips parted as he continued to speak. "I think deep down you know you did nothing wrong. I think you're scared and hurt by what happened and you're lashing out at yourself over those emotions. Don't. You're more than one bad person's life, Fuu. Don't sacrifice who you are over it." Jin stood without another word and left the room to go relieve Mugen.

Fuu stared after him for the longest time, his words circling around in her head. It made sense, all of it. She was still shocked by it. This had to be the longest conversation she'd ever had with the quiet samurai... and also the most meaningful.