Shepard doesn't know about the view from the top of the presidium. She does know this view, the grim and airless iron-gripped view from the bottom of endurance, though. And if given the choice, of seeing the world from above it's brightest height, or of being down here with Garrus, unpleasantly moist, ugly with blood and worse?

Everyone's got to die someday. She can expect no greater honor than to do it alongside him, if that day's coming soon.

So, she's halfway expecting it when he says the words. She ought to hate it better; it's such a deathbed confession, pulled out of him as much by the desperation of circumstances as by genuine feeling. Not that the feeling isn't genuine, she knows him too well to ever dream it could be otherwise. Even so, all but against her will the words ring through her like a churchbell, bright and pure and unpleasantly galvanizing. She wasn't lying when she said she wanted the words, nor that she hadn't needed them, but...

...But damn. Isn't that still just something? It made her feel... braver, somehow— and wasn't it just so silly, so stupid, how much it affected her? It was worse than middle-school.

"Well hell, Garrus," Shepard tries, clearing her throat, as if that stupid bashful smile wasn't already damned apparent, "I guess I'll just have to keep you."

If it weren't for everything else, this might've just become her favorite spot on Abraxas.