"Because it's important."

Everything that had happened in the last month, the last year, was completely gone. Instead she carried a little white blizzard inside, shaken completely by the man in front of her. She wanted to hit him, she wanted to kiss him, she wanted to welcome him home and she wanted to take out her gun and kill him again. No amount of racing mental machinations could make what she was seeing real, but here he was.

Alive.

"Harry..." she started, but there wasn't anything else. "Harry... Harry, Harry, Harry..." As she spoke, his name started to come out with more and more force, and soon not enough, pushing her to add the pounding of her fist against his chest to each repetition.

He began to fight her, but made no move to stop her. "Come on," he murmured, encouraging her outburst. "Let me have it."

She broke down, gave in, whipping at him as she felt the little pressure valve in her head finally stop whistling from the critical point.

Without warning, an unfamiliar hand fell roughly on her shoulder from behind. In what was left of her rational mind, she flashed on the realization that this was a bouncer, someone who could only see a man being smacked to within an inch of his life by an angry, flustered woman, someone who didn't see the miracle that was happening to her in the process.

But Harry did. In a second, she was pinned in his arms, unable to flail anymore. She heard his voice float over her like a black thunderhead, every bit as threatening.

"If you touch her again, there won't be enough of you left to bury."

She could hear the muffled, brutish response of the bouncer, then felt Harry dig into his back pocket. "I'm sure your boys don't want to throw down with mine, okay?" He stuffed whatever he'd shown to the bouncer back into his jeans and enveloped Diane again. "He's gone, baby."

"Why?" she mumbled into his shirt, trying to pick up her head and just giving up.

He chuckled again, the quiet, deep buzz tickling in her ear. "How much does it matter?" She managed to get her eyes up to his finally. "It matters. Why are you here?"

"That's an existential question."

She had to keep herself from smacking him again. "You know what I mean."