"Why did you confront him alone, Shepard?" Garrus asks her when she wanders into the main battery later, his voice heavy with disapproval and his arms crossed over his chest. "He could have killed you. You should have taken in backup."
She laughs, a bitter sound, and leans against the bulkhead, matching his posture with a defiant tilt of her chin. "Krogans respect strength, not caution. I made the right choice."
He looks angry, in a way she's never seen directed at her. "You made the reckless choice."
She stares at him for a moment. "You're one to talk, Archangel." He grimaces, clearly frustrated but unable to argue, and she laughs again. Reckless. And what's wrong with that, exactly? "I can't die," she says, voice sharper than she intends. Everything about her now is sharp and raw and rough edged. "And even when I do, they just bring me back. You think Cerberus couldn't do it again? Probably be easier to fix a snapped neck than the burned out husk I was last time."
He flinches and she smiles, grim and satisfied despite the sour taste of guilt. She's seen the pictures. Needed to, to make it real. She wasn't mostly dead. She wasn't severely injured. She was a charred corpse and she has no idea how she's still here, walking and talking.
"Leave it, Garrus," she says, suddenly exhausted down to her bones. "I'm fine. Grunt's one of us now. Cerberus is still Cerberus. We've got work to do."