My thoughts are clear. The killing was wholly justified, and not simply because we are at war. She attacked us, I fought back. And I won.

[ Well, sort of. In hindsight, it was an obvious ploy to distract. Would the Pleroma have been able to get inside the jail, had Howl not fallen for it hook, line and sinker? If he had not flown off to pursue someone who'd so clearly been aiming to peel him away from his defensive position?

At any rate, Howl knows that isn't what Emet-Selch is probing for, and it's not what's bothering him, either. ]

...I should feel content about it. Perhaps even prideful.

[ But, he doesn't. While he doesn't say that part aloud, it's the obvious conclusion to what he's saying. It's not so much that Howl feels guilty, because he doesn't. It's that he feels almost nothing at all — a state of being that is completely and utterly unlike him. Even he knows it. And for his body to have not gone back to normal, even now, days after they returned...

The wobble of his mind makes it clear that it's caught in a thicket of thoughts, but none of them come out concretely in their communion. ]