Last chapter! This wasn't supposed to be chaptered....but oh well. XD

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam 00.

She's been on his mind a lot.

For some strange reason, he just can't forget her. Her face, flickering and glittering in the licking flames and towering embers that are eating her country alive, is always overshadowing his thoughts.

Even as he is preparing to fight yet another battle, to change the world with his Gundam, her words ring in his ears, pleading, begging him not to fight. Almost as though she wants to protect him. But such an idea is unreasonable--he knows that Marina Ismail would have to fight to protect anyone or anything she cares about. He just doesn't know how to protect without fighting.

But slowly, over time, her words--her concerns--penetrate deeper and deeper, searing with a heat that is neither anger nor sadness. It is not the hatred and the scars Setsuna knows so well. Rather, it is something strange, something different. And yet, it feels...indescribable. Gentle. It resembles something he has felt before, something old and dead, but still different in a way. He is unable to truly define the similarity, but he finds his mind slipping back into reflection about his parents. How they made him feel. How he once felt about them. The words to define those feelings are dead, along with his parents, lost in his memory.

As he looks after the 00 Gundam and carefully monitors the 0-Raiser, instructing Ian to hurry with the repairs, her shiny hair flashes in his face, painted with the fire from Azadistan, the black hatred and the twisted nature of the A-Laws, and the drowning, ghostly white despair radiating from every contour of her frightened face. She is such a mix of colors and painful emotions in his mind that he cannot distinguish what her true feelings are.

And that's when he decides to fight for her. To untangle the mysterious feelings, to remember the feelings he used to have.

To discover what this strange pulsing deep inside of his heart is.

I would love reviews...thank you to everyone who read this lil' fic!