Athrun had spent years fighting for The Plants.
He had seen hundreds of girls, hundreds of women, hundreds of people. Blonde hair and blue eyes, red hair with green, even the prettiest of pink hair with the prettiest blue eyes that could set on you. Her softest touch, her gentle voice. She was pure, pure and beautiful.
So when the Coordinator met Cagalli, she was just another chip on the shoulder, another girl. One that wouldn't be classed as beautiful under the regular circumstances - But she was. She was beautiful, but not in the way others might think.
Her hair did not fall with grace or drip with gold; it was often dry and dead and hung over her shoulders in the same un-even and boyish haircut she had kept for years.
Her eyes were not the colour of the sky above or the sea below; they were the colour of the hot, dry sand. They were often tired and dead to the world.
Her hands were cracked and worn from the fighting of war.
Her lips were chapped and thin, they had spoken the words of a leader, of someone who truly knew pain.
Nor did her voice come across gentle; her voice was loud and noisy, her opinion was always stated,
but she was beautiful.
In the way that she stole kisses and her skin was the milkiest of whites.
In the way she hides herself when the moon shines outside, and her shadow reflect onto the bed-sheet.
She was beautiful.
In the way the wind blew through that same dead hair,
or the way her dry eyes also filled with the fiery passion of the sun.
And in the way her cracked and scarred hands held shyly onto his.
She was beautiful in the way of early mornings and only coffee for breakfast
In the way she read love poems she searched endlessly for in books, but could never write them herself.
And she was beautiful, because never, not once, would she taste defeat.
Even when despair was the only thing she had left to eat,
not once, would it ever get to touch her lips.
And that, Athrun decided, was why Cagalli was beautiful.