I apologize for not posting for sometime now and I hope this chapter provides that which you seek. Worry not if you believe it too short for another will hopefully be up soon. I simply decided to break it where I did so it would be easier on my part to manage.

Thank you for reading my tale and if you have any criticisms, good or bad, post a review or send me a message. If you like the story enough I ask that you follow or favorite, or if you are up to the task you can go ahead and do both, with my full permission of course.

Enjoy.

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When Dry Rain Yields

Sand thundered down upon the crippled trio as they made their way across the wasteland Blue light emanating from Liara's hand spared there sight only a few feet in the dusty darkness. Her ability to completely shield them from the storm she had recently lost. She was drained and tired but she kept at it, one foot in front of the other. It had been hours since seeing any belonging to the Enclave and little else besides sand. She heard a soft moan behind her and turned to see the injured Courier draped over the shoulders of Saren. She knew both Walker and Saren were lucky to be alive.

"We really need to find shelter soon," she shouted over the roaring winds. She eyed the wounded human with worry as she spoke to Saren.

"I don't think it will make much a difference to him," said Saren. "He will be dead before too long.

Liara knew the Turian was right if they did not find help. The height the human fell from would kill most and it crippled the man as it was. She was certain that if he even lived he would be confined to a bed for the rest of his life. She turned about and continued to press forward into the storm with her eyes open for a place of shelter.

As the sand rained like needles onto her soft skin she thought of the man her companion now carried. Confusing would be a good word to describe him. Displaced would be another. He matched the statue of a human hero long dead making him very old were they the same. If it were true, she wondered how he survived so long, not just in years since his time, but after the destruction that destroyed this planet. Her respect for human technology and its endurance rose at the mere thought of its potential longevity.

"Liara, to your right," shouted Saren over the howling wind. A building in disrepair stood defiantly against the raging storm. Liara and Saren quickly made their way into the building greeting the still interior with great relief.

Before long a small fire, powered by old furniture, burned in the center of the crippled trio. Saren and Liara stared tiredly at the warm fire as the Courier laid still in the warm glow, unaware of the world around. She turned her eyes away from the fire to watch Saren as he rubbed his back where he was struck by one of the Enclave. He was lucky to be alive with only having to sacrifice some skin leaving behind a ravaged section of his back that pulsed with pain. Thankfully his armor had taken most of the damage.

Liara left the warm glow of the fire to look over the injured man. When she reached him after he was thrown through the air due to the explosion, she thought him dead. Saren wished to 'put him out of his misery' but she refused to allow him to do so out of hope their savior might be saved himself. She understood why Saren wanted to end his life. His body had been distorted in truly unnatural ways and he showed all signs of a life about to pass into eternal hands, yet he did not. Laboring, he breathed. Defiantly, he stayed alive. As she walked with him and listened to his hard breathing and eventual moan of anguish she floated the impossible and somewhat childish idea that he was somehow getting better. Now that she had looked him over thoroughly, she knew he had.

"Saren," she whispered in disbelief. "Come here."

Saren slowly stood up and made his way towards her. "What's happened?"

"Look at him," she demanded. Saren looked and Liara saw his eyes widen in surprise. In the face of the human color had returned. Not only that but bones they both knew to be broken seemed mended and his body was now formed to its original shape. The human also seemed to be breathing as though in a deep sleep instead of a man about to die.

"How is this possible?" asked Saren in disbelief. "How has he healed like this. He should be dead!"

"It's the suit," said Liara with reasonable confidence. "You saw what it did. He fought and won against more than twenty others and survived not only an explosion but the fall that came after. This suit is miraculous."

Saren rubbed the suit gently with his hands. "If it's true, it has a lot of potential," he said as though in a daze.

"We have to get it to the Council then," said Liara causing Saren's head to snap up. "We have never seen anything like it. Just its medical capabilities warrants it important enough to get it into the right hands."

"Yeah," said Saren dimly. "The right hands."

"Who knows," continued Liara. Maybe they will give us a reward for this. Maybe we could finally spend some time together away from some outpost or another. You know, take a vacation." She gave him a not so innocent smirk.

Outside the wind began to die down signaling the end of the storm. Liara smiled thinking that things finally might be turning around.

"I love you, Liara," whispered Saren. He seemed bothered and was looking at the ground as though mulling over a hard decision.

"I love you too, Saren," said Liara meaningfully speaking the words for the first time to him. Her immediate happiness faded as she began to worried of his depressed attitude. "Is everything alright."

"I hope you can forgive me, Liara," he said as he began to move closer arms wide. Liara embraced him and for a moment they stood there quietly in each other's company. Liara was confused at how he was acting.

"Forgive you for..." she began to ask as a sharp pain in her stomach interrupted what she was saying. Her body ,still in the embrace of Saren, trembled violently. She looked down and saw purple blood spill out of her body over the hand of Saren holding a small knife that was imbedded within her. Her legs gave out and Saren caught her from falling and removed his knife throwing it to the ground as though in disgust.

"Forgive me for having to do this to you," he said as he grabbed a small package from a meager compartment on his armor. He pulled a tiny syringe out. "This should help with the pain." She hardly felt the sting of the needle as he injected her with contents of the device. Her pain began to fade as did the feeling of her body itself. After a few seconds it felt as though she was floating and light seemed blurred in her eyes while sound was muffled to her ears.

"Why Saren?" she asked slowly in disbelief as she laid on the cold ground. "I, I don't understand." She continued to look at her stomach and watch the blood quickly leak out of her.

"Because as much as I love you, I love my people more." He said this solemnly as if the true weight of what he had done was a heavy but necessary responsibility. "This suit is true powerful. My people need that power. We are so close to extinction, so close. All that are loyal have sworn to the Primarch to bring back anything that can help us, no matter the cost to ourselves or others. I have to bring them this. If I didn't and they found out I would be casted as a traitor and hunted down by those in the shadows, as would everyone close to me including you. And if I brought them this and they realized that you witnessed it and were alive, they would hunt you down and torture you until they had all the information they could retrieve before ultimately killing you." He said this while on his knees next to her, holding her hand firmly. Liara struggled to break away but her wound and the drugs in her system sapped her energy. "No matter what you would be killed. There is nothing I could have done but do this which is right."

"You're wrong Saren," she croaked. "This is not right, not right at all."

"That suit represents too much of an opportunity for my people. Those Enclave soldiers were as powerful as any of those belonging to the Council races, and one man wiped them out using that suit. I will not pass on that chance to bring my people a step closer to salvation, no matter the cost. That armor will give my people the power the power necessary to enable our soldiers, that are few in number, to outmatch any foe."

"You are a fool Saren, and the foolishness will be your destruction," cursed Liara. "You don't know what you've done." Saren just looked at her, his eyes turning cold as emotion drained from them.

Without saying another word he stood up and left the drugged asari. He bent over and retrieved his knife previously cast away. He stared at it as though in a trance. The purple blood that covered it shined faintly in the firelight. Liara watched him, each movement he made was a blur but while he stood still he was seen in perfect clarity. She realized he was a monster. There have been signs of how cruel he was during their time and travel together, but never had he laid a finger on her. He had never even muttered a crude word directed at her. Her feelings for him blinded her to the fracture in his soul and the glimpses of his nature witnessed in months passed. He was fractured and a monster hungry for the need of the power displayed by the armor rose from the turian's lowly depths. As the turian stood still, she knew inside he was experiencing a purge of his soul. Through that sacrifice he was gaining a component that may help the people he loved, but she knew it would cost him the ability to love those very people he sacrificed for. She knew if he lived long enough, he would become a terror to those he killed her to save. As she laid on the floor with her life blood spilling out onto the ground tears streamed down her face. Tears for the man and the monster he was becoming and tears for the one that would never see the light of day.

As the minutes passed by Liara watched as Saren stared at the knife that struck her a mortal blow. She watched until her eyes grew heavy. She saw less and less and soon all she knew was darkness.

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Saren with his hand held the knife and with his heart he held pain. The life of a woman he loved was extinguished by weapon in his hand. He told himself it was necessary, that it was for the greater good. He had taken an oath to restore the turian's rightful place in the galaxy not matter the cost. What he had told her was true, that she would be hunted down for what she knew if not soon than eventually. In his heart he believed that he had saved her that pain. In his mind he knew her sacrifice was necessary to help his people and with emotionless clarity he made up his mind that the needs of his people, the needs of the many, outweighed the needs of the one, even if it was her. He could have done as she said and destroyed the suit, but it was not worth it. Her life was not worth the power that would be loss otherwise.

Finally he moved, quickly closing the distance between himself and the human. As he moved he glanced at Liara, unmoving and closed eyed. Part of him leapt out in agony but another part of him, the truer part of him, beat the agony down. He got to his knees on the side of the human and brought his knife high into the air. With all his might he brought it down and felt a hard thump as it hit the humans exposed head. He hesitated as it hit, the sensation felt off to him. He realized there was not blood, there was not even a wound on the human where his knife hit. Confused he brought the knife back up and slammed it down. It did not penetrate. So he did it again and again, each time the human remained unharmed. Finally he leaned down close and slowly moved the knife towards the exposed skin. He move his knife closer and closer until only a hair's breadth from contact it stopped. Meeting the knife in the air was a faintly thin veil of a purple field protecting the man underneath. For minutes he tried to bypass the veil with his knife and hands and each time he failed to do so. He wished desperately that he still had a rifle he lost in the storm.

Out of frustration he stopped his attack and began to closely examine the armor. It was protecting the human and he moved his hands around trying to remove it from its host. But the armor was tightly locked together and would not budge. He tried accessing the outdated the small computer on the human's wrist but it would not activate at his touch. He panicked at the thought of not being able to remove the armor. After a few seconds he managed to calm himself down and began going over the armor again.

This time he noticed how crude it was up close. Clearly it was an early design, perhaps event the original prototype for the line. He looked closely at the seams of the armor, searching for any weakness he could exploit. He realized that an armor such as this had to have an emergency release. Of course he also contemplated the thought that perhaps this armor was so new that such a emergency release had not yet been added. Finally he turned the human over. Most powerful armor generally had a large compartment on the back for power generation, but the one on this armor was hardly noticeable, thin like the armor itself. He searched on the back and just before giving up found the tight edges of a small panel. He brought his knife to the lines of the panel to test its resistance. As before the purple veil stopped his knife from touching, but it felt different to Saren, weaker. He continued to push and push and finally the veil gave way and he heard the soft clink of his knife hitting the armor. He dug the knife's sharp edge into the seam of the panel and worked at it until the panel gave a small pop as it came out of place. In the center inside the small panel was a circular lock with a ridge in the center to serve as a handle. Engraved were the words 'LOCK' and 'UNLOCK' each with a directional arrow. He twisted it left in the direction to unlock and it gave a low click. Suddenly some parts of the armor began to fall back into other parts. Then finally what was left gave a hiss and snapped off the human leaving him fully exposed wearing nothing but a pair of old boxers.

Saren searched around the room looking for some way to carry the small pieces of armor. He eventually pulled a tattered curtain from underneath a small pile of rubble and used it to form a sack. He gently placed the armor pieces into the improvised sack and set it down near the fire.

He then went back to the now near naked human. Just as he could not let Liara live, he most certainly could not let the human live. He raised his knife into the air and for a moment it stayed still. A necessary longing came over Saren to kill the human. He looked where he knew his heart to be and smiled.

"Goodbye Walker," he said as his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

He gripped the firmly in his hand and sent it crashing down towards the unconscious human for the kill.