"To you? Of course I thought, and-- hoped so."

His heart hadn't dared let itself believe it in full, especially towards the end.

"But you-- Horatio, you were important to-- more people in a way that I couldn't be to them and that would mean something real, to you and them both. I weighed the costs. And by the time I took that bullet it was just a matter of death one way or another. What did my name mean to me, after the end? You knew, and you would live untainted to make my testimony worth it and that was-- all that mattered."