Alice watched from where she sat, crouched in Jack's chair, as he calmed his team down. Owen was slumped on the steps with his back facing towards her. He held his head in his hands. The second female, the fiery one, was speaking intently with pointed hand gestures, but Alice could only hear the sound her voice made, and not the words it pronounced. Jack fended off her agitated words with a few choice ones of his own and a wave of his hand. Then, he sat beside Owen and put an arm around his shoulders. He said something in Owen's ear, something comforting, something reassuring, as the rest of the team looked on. The quiet male kept glancing nervously up at Alice's perch, while the first female looked at Owen, wide-eyed and wanting desperately to say something that would be of some use to him. When Alice had opened herself to the first female, she had caught a glimpse of her long-hidden infatuation with Owen. Now she had a chance to delve deeper into it, to experience the dips and rises in the emotional mountain range of a young female human, to dissect them and scrutinize the pieces to the most minute detail, but the thought made her nauseous.

Below her, Owen was rising to his feet. His expression was stoic, and as Jack dismissed him and the others to their work, Alice could see Owen shrugging off the team's inquiries as to his condition. Jack watched them for a moment; then, satisfied that everything was back to normal, he turned and headed up the stairs.

Alice's flight instinct kicked in. Like a frightened animal, she sprang nimbly from her squatting position in Jack's chair and raced through the door that lead to his personal quarters. She knew, in the back of her mind, in the highly evolved portion of her brain, that running was silly and useless, but she was compelled by a primal thing that lived deep inside her guts. Jack intimidated her the way a lion intimidates a man. She knew nothing of him other than that he was powerful and potentially deadly.

"Really, Alice," Jack said as he unlocked the door. "You're actually going to hide from me?" He crossed his office in a few long strides and stopped in the doorway of his room, calmly regarding Alice, who sat on his bed with her knees pulled tight against her chest. "Come on, that's not very mature." Alice didn't speak. She was ashamed of herself, but too prideful to apologize.

Jack moved from where he stood, leaning carelessly against the doorframe, to sit on the bed next to her. "Alice," he said quietly. "What was all that about?"

"I…" She swallowed. "Everything's happened so fast, Jack. I didn't know how to feel at first. But I woke up and I heard them—your team—and they made me so angry. I didn't even have to read their emotions to know what they thought of me. A nuisance. The dead bird on their doorstep that they step on when they go out to get the papers in the morning that stinks for the rest of the day. They were underestimating me. I had to prove them wrong."

"You're overreacting," Jack said calmly. "They don't know who you are, and they're naturally weary of strangers anyway."

"I've traveled the universe, Jack," Alice said. "I've seen its wonders and its terrors. I've seen sights their little human minds couldn't comprehend." She stood up, her agitation growing. "They don't know a thing about me—about what I could do."

"The Doctor—"

"Oh, the Doctor," Alice spat. Where there was once shame at her actions, there was now anger at him, at the man and all he stood for. "The Doctor, the bloody precious Doctor, with his wonderful box and his sonic screwdriver. Ancient, brilliant, madman Doctor with all his wisdom and his knowledge and his guilt. Twenty-one years I travel with him and then he leaves. Just leaves. And I'm with nothing but a key and the name he gave me."

For a moment, there was silence. Alice she sat down again, heavily, her hands clenched into fists upon her thighs. Jack swallowed.

"What I was going to say was that the Doctor would expect better of you. You've traveled with him longer than anyone. Was the example he set for you then not enough? He's the most powerful being in the universe but does he look down on other species, other people? No, he helps them. Saves them time and time again without expecting anything in return. I understand that you're angry at him— believe me, I do—and I understand that you're angry at me and my team as well. But what you need to understand is that we're your family now, Alice, whether you like it or not. If you want our respect, you'll have to earn it. Resorting to petty tricks to make us fear you is not the way to go."

Jack had risen from the bed and made to leave the room, but he paused in the doorway. "If there's one thing I know about humans, it's that fear provokes them. All you'll accomplish by using your powers to intimidate us is giving us the will to fight against you. You can take some time to cool down, but I expect you to apologize to Owen before the day is up." Alice began to protest but Jack cut her off. "You live in my house, you play by my rules. Get it done."

Alice stared mutinously at the ground as he left, letting the door close behind him. As far as she could tell, Jack's rules meant control. It meant keeping yourself clenched in a tight fist and wearing an iron mask that hid every flicker of emotion. It meant never revealing what lay inside to anyone.

Alice smiled to herself. So far, she was fitting in just fine. She'd told Jack the truth, to be sure; his team's ignorance and her anger at her situation had been what provoked her. But what she didn't tell him—what she didn't tell him was that she hadn't delved into Owen's feelings and used them to shake his very psyche because she was angry. No; she did it because she could. Because she wanted to. Because she liked it.