"Why now, Harris? Why suddenly do you care?" Tor Hauer, former bully, asked. "You've done everything you can to avoid us this last year."

"I wanted to forget it ever happened, I wanted to forget the taste of raw pig and nearly raping a girl." Xander answered starkly. "I told myself you probably wanted to forget too."

"Yeah, but that's real hard to do when the nightmares won't quit." Tor said bitterly. "And you have no one to talk to about it. But we couldn't even talk to each other about it, because that would mean we'd have to admit it out loud, we ate a human being. It felt natural and we wanted it and I remember it and I don't want to, but it never goes away. And now, here you are, talking about it. Why?"

"Because I recently discovered I still have a connection to the power, the spirit can't control me anymore, but I can still use the power. But there's also this feeling, you guys were my pack, my responsibility and maybe you still are."

Tor looked alarmed. "You're sure the spirit isn't there too? It didn't feel wrong while it was in me, but it did things I'd never do. And I have to remember that."

"It did things I wouldn't either, I wanted a date with Buffy, I'd never consider hurting her. But I tried, while that thing was in me." Xander couldn't sit still and got up. "Until I told Cordelia about it, only one person knew I remembered, Giles."

"The Librarian who was also there, at the zoo, trying to get us dispossessed. What are you into, Harris?"

"You must have noticed Sunnydale isn't like other towns." Xander walked over to the so far silent Cordelia. "Even if you never talk about it, you still notice things."

"People that smell like rot and blood." Tor answered. "You never forget the smell of blood."

Xander shuddered. "No, you don't, do you? I wouldn't exactly call them people, they're not alive."

"Duh, they smell like rot." Tor retorted. "We've managed to avoid them when we see them."

"I don't avoid them, I'm part of a group that hunts them. They're vampires, Tor "

"You expect me to yell, No! You're insane! I was possessed by the spirit of a hyena and ate a human being. They smell like rot and blood, I'd figured out what they were already. Why do you hunt them?"

"Besides the fact that they kill people, mostly children and teenagers, they're demons, Tor. The animal spirit may not have acted like a human would, but it was still natural, those things aren't and I have reason to hate them. One of them took Jesse and made him one of them and another killed my parents."

"So, not a serial killer."

"No, he left a message so I'd know it was him. That was when I discovered I still have a connection to the power, I nearly managed to beat it into a dust pile on the floor. Someone intervened and stopped me from finishing it."

"And you think we might have a connection to it too? And what do you expect me to do about it?"

"Make a choice."

"We didn't have a choice while it was in us."

"Now you do."

"And what's the choice you want us to make?"

"To accept or continue to deny. To use it or figure out how to get rid of it permanently. To fight or not."

"Those choices depend on whether I've got this connection you're talking about." Tor warned.

"I know, but we were a pack and I think that means something. I recently told someone that rabid, starving animals take better care of their young than the Harris' do. For two days we depended on each other, protected each other and would have died for each other. A connection that close, can it ever really go away?"

"I don't know, I don't know if I want to know. But part of me misses it." Tor admitted. "That connection to each other, that certainty. I think it's why me and the others still hang out, even with the fact that being around each other reminds us of it. How have you dealt with it?"

"I still have Willow and she was family before it happened and a connection to Jesse and more recently Cordelia." He smiled slightly at her, as she squeezed his hand. "She's my Queen."

"I get what that means." Tor nodded. "Give me some time to think about it and let me talk to the others. If we decide to explore this possible connection, where should we look for you?"

"Either the Library or Chase Manor, I'm staying there until things can be sorted out."

"Alright, I'll let you know."

Xander and Cordelia headed back out to her car and sat for a moment thinking about the conversation and the memories dredged up by it.

"Well?" Cordelia asked.

"I could feel it." Xander answered. "He has it too and I think he knows it, may have already tapped into it. Tor never avoided anything, most especially a fight. And he acknowledged vampires exist."

"You think he's dealt with some."

"Yes, I do. What he's deciding now is if he wants the other connection, to pack."

"Our lives are never going to be the same, are they."

It wasn't a question, it was a fact they had to live with.