A/N: So… this is my first time writing for Gundam 00. Obviously, since I only finished watching episode 25 just over a week ago. When it got to the point where we knew what happened after Nena Trinity showed the world her disgusting shallowness, I had wanted to write a meeting between the two of them, since he felt so strongly about how utterly wrong what Nena did was, and since she was the one hurt the most (that we know about) by it. It's certainly not written in my usual style, (which is much, much wordier) but I think it fits for this particular piece. Well, anyways, continue on. I hope you enjoy it.

Bitter Knowledge

By: Mizuki Kurenaida

It was a coincidence that he saw her in that hospital. A coincidence that he read the name plate as he passed the room and recognized it. It was a mere coincidence that he felt the rare stirrings of pity that drove him to enter her room, unannounced, and apologize.

In no less than thirty words, he apologized. It was brief, short, unfulfilling, but satisfactory. He had said what needed to be said, and was going to leave…

Until she asked him not to.

He stopped and turned shortly, harsh, impatient eyes boring deep into what was left of her soul, hoping to glean some sort of answer as to 'why' from those tattered remains.

It was a simple sentence she spoke, one that he really didn't want to answer or her to know the answer to, but, as she was, he wasn't about to deny her that simple bit of knowledge, the one thing that could truly identify the source of her pain.

You said that Gundam you own and the ones belonging to them are different. How so?

He shook his head and turned, heading for the door. Empty, lidded eyes stared at him dolefully, an odd gleam that couldn't be considered anything but dangerous lurking at their core. She started to raise her hand, and her voice, to beckon him back once more, but just before he reached the portal that would leave her without answers, he stopped and raised his voice in a soft manner she had never heard from him – even if the truth was that she had never really listened to him in the first place – telling her the awful, awful truth. The thing she really did not want to hear.

Green. He turned his head back to look her straight in her emotionless face. The particles emitted from the GN Drives of Celestial Being's Gundams are green.

And then he was gone, without so much as a goodbye, or even an explanation as to what a GN Drive was, or why the fact that the particles were green should even matter to her.

But then it hit her.

The Gundams that had destroyed her did not shimmer with Green brilliance, the color of life…

But with Red.

Blood, pain, death, passion, hell. All could be described with this color. Everything that could seemingly give you life and hope only to tear it all away at the last moment – as it had with her.

As she sat there, unfeeling, slow, reluctant tears making red tracks down her otherwise pallid skin, Louise could only chuckle bitterly, thinking that somewhere out there, the God all those religious fools still believed in was having the time of his life screwing with everything that should be and turning it into something that shouldn't.

Her bitter chuckle turned into hysterical laughter, and at that moment she wished, she really, really wished, that she could hate the color green.

Fin.

PS: The person who visited her is Setsuna, just to make it clear. I thought it would have been pretty obvious, but you never know. And, if you're wondering about why I describe her as empty and unfeeling, and yet add things like doleful and bitter, it's not a plot hole or me forgetting my words two seconds in. It is like that to describe that while she feels empty, her emotions do still exist – whether she realizes it or not.