Slowly updating, but still updating.

Cardiff was warmer than usual this time of year, a fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on who you asked) after effect of the rift being exploited a few weeks prior by one Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen. Rose personally was quite pleased by the warmer weather. She soon discovered after joining Torchwood that they frequently made trips out after dark and not having to bundle up was a definite plus. A dark jacket and dark trousers to avoid attention, her trainers, a pair of warm brown glittens, and a scarf was just enough to keep her comfortable.

"Now, it's real simple," Owen muttered under his breath so as not to disturb the thing they'd been chasing for the last twenty minutes. They'd managed to herd it down an alley with a dead end. Now it was all a matter of capturing it. "All you gotta do is get his attention and lead him back to us. We'll take care of the rest."

Rose scowled, not at all trusting the wheedling tone of her coworker. "And why can't one of you do it?"

"'Cos we know how to take one down and you don't. So until then, you get to be bait."

"This is hazing."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Rose gritted her teeth. At least Owen wasn't trying to hide it. Jack's word was evidently not enough to convince them she was capable of being in Torchwood. She should've known it wouldn't be but she'd hoped they respected his judgment enough. Owen and Suzie were supposed to be keeping her out of trouble but instead they were trying to rope her into being weevil bait. Well, Owen was. Suzie wasn't saying anything but if she disagreed with Owen she'd have stopped him by now.

"Besides," he added, "should be no trouble for you. Didn't you say you run for your life all the time?"

She rolled her eyes. Figures he'd use that against her now. She didn't have a problem with being bait, exactly. She'd been bait before for things far creepier than the thing lurking down the alley. She didn't like that she was being forced into this.

One tap on the Bluetooth in her ear and Jack would know what they were trying to make her do. But that wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want one of her first hunts with Torchwood to be marred by her tattling to get out of something. No, she wanted to show them that she could do this, dammit. And if that meant having to be bait…well…

Jack was going to be absolutely livid when he found out.

Rose rolled her shoulders and flexed her toes. "Fine. One weevil, coming up. You better be ready for it."

Suzie pulled a canister from her pocket and nodded. "Good luck."

She bit back the urge to glare at the woman and instead started down the alley. She could hear the creature rooting around the rubbish bins, bags and paper rustling, plastic creaking, and the clangs of hard objects against tin. Jack called them weevils, animalistic aliens that came through the rift every so often. Leathery and bald, vicious and bloodthirsty with teeth and jaws perfect for ripping into flesh. They were virtually identical and they all wore the same navy blue outfit. Jack had made a point to stress how dangerous they were before letting her join them on the chase.

The weevil seemed unaware of her as she approached. She walked slowly on the balls of her feet, keeping the rest of her body as still as possible. When she neared, the weevil started growling but made no move towards her. Not even when she was a mere four feet away. It simply continued on its search, paying her no mind except to growl.

She'd have to provoke it to get it to follow but she didn't dare get any closer to it. She looked around for something to throw at it and her wrist brushed the gun at her waist. She tensed. Then, slowly, slid her hand to the hilt.

Jack had been teaching her in Torchwood's firing range. It was a mandatory requirement for working in Torchwood and she'd been unable to get out of it. Now she could make a kill shot at 30 yards and was quickly progressing to 50.

Rose jerked her hand away from the gun. No. She wasn't going to kill it just because it was an alien. She wasn't like them. And for all she knew, it was sentient. It was wearing clothes after all.

She cleared her throat and let out a tiny, "Um," and received a growl in reply. Rose glanced at the mouth of the alley. She couldn't see Owen or Suzie but she knew they were nearby. "C-can you understand me?" she whispered.

The weevil paused and looked straight at her. Black eyes met brown and alien and human regarded each other in the gloom.

"You have to come with me," she continued at the same volume. "Or go back underground. One or the other."

For a moment, the weevil seemed to be considering her words. Then it growled, snorted loudly, and went back to rummaging through the rubbish.

Rose inhaled shakily through her nose and glanced around her feet for something she could use to use as a projectile. She spotted a beer bottle a few feet away and inched towards it. The weevil growled and she froze for a second, glancing at it, then kept going. Her fingers curled around the cool glass, mindful of the sticky-looking stuff on the bottom, and straightened up. She skirted around the weevil so she was between it and the exit.

"Psst," she hissed. "Weevil."

It looked up, baring its teeth at her. She pulled her lips back and growled in return, which made it growl louder, but it still didn't charge her. She gripped the bottle firmly in her hand, drew her arm back, then chucked it at the weevil with all her might.

The bottle made contact with the weevil's shoulder. It roared furiously and charged. Rose let out a yelp and sped back up the alley. Adrenaline rushed through her anew and she smiled despite herself. It felt good to be moving again after being stationary for so long. She flew out of the alley so fast she almost didn't see Owen and Suzie lying in wait on either side. She kept running, even when she heard Suzie let out a shout and the weevil's snarls changed from angry to enraged.

She didn't stop until she was halfway up the block. By the time she turned around, chest heaving, she saw Suzie and Owen standing triumphantly over the unconscious alien on the ground. Suzie lifted her hand to her ear and a moment later her voice came through the speaker in Rose's ear.

"Jack, we got it."

"Nicely done," Jack replied almost immediately. "How'd Rose do?"

"Well, she was a bit slow in getting it's attention, but—"

"I'm sorry, what? You had her play weevil bait?"

Rose lifted her hand, which was trembling from the adrenaline to press the button on her comm. "It's alright, Jack. One weevil? Easy. Besides, it didn't even seem to think I was a threat. Or prey."

"Seriously?" Owen asked.

"I had to chuck something just to get it to chase me."

Even from where she was, she could see the shock on Owen and Suzie's faces. She should've known then that they weren't just going to accept this. Weevils were vicious and anything that breathed showed up on their threat radar.

While they were waiting for Jack to arrive, Owen showed her their way of tagging weevils. Every time they caught a weevil they would brand it with a simple black spot on the back of the neck. Anything more, like a number or a tracking device, the weevils brethren would know and kill it. They'd tried every form of identification and tracking over the decades but nothing worked. In the end, they found marking every weevil with a little dot was the only thing the weevil population would accept. After ten years, all the weevils that lived in Cardiff had been marked at least once. Every time they had to deal with a weevil, they would mark it upon recapturing. Policy was that if they caught a weevil with five marks on its neck, it was put down.

"So, let's have a look at ol' Charlie boy here." Owen said as he knelt down. He carefully maneuvered the weevil's head so they could see its neck. The leathery flesh was completely bare. He tapped its neck. "Fresh out of the rift."

He pulled a slender black stylus from his pocket and pressed it to the base of the weevil's skull. He pressed a small button and it emitted a tiny beep, its tip lighting up blue for a few seconds. Releasing the button, the nose and light died, and he lifted it away. The first black dot was now in place.

"So what do we do with it?" Rose asked.

"We take it to the sewers." Suzie answered.

She wasn't kidding. As soon as Jack arrived, they loaded the Weevil into the back then drove for fifteen minutes through the city until they reached a nondescript manhole. Jack and Suzie lifted it while Owen showed Rose how to drop the poor bastard down the hole, feet first. Rose was surprised at how careless they were with the unconscious aliens but Owen brushed off her concerns. They were very tough and a Weevil that woke up sore was less likely to surface any time soon.

The ride back to the Hub was quiet, almost tense. Rose couldn't see why. She thought things had gone quite well. The weevil was off the streets and no one had been maimed. She'd proven she could handle weevils, was the best one for approaching them, and wasn't the best one to play weevil bait. Jack would probably be able to find some use for that down the road. But as she stared out the window, she could feel the eyes of Tosh and Owen on her, and no one so much as whispered until Jack spoke up.

"Tosh, we're by your flat. Want me to drop you off?"

"Uh, sure," she replied. "Will you make sure I didn't leave coffee by my keyboard when you get back?"

"Can do."

"G'head and drop me off, too," Owen said. "I've got nothing to finish tonight."

Jack pulled up next to a block of rather posh flats and Rose felt her jaw drop. She couldn't imagine how much these cost to live in. She probably paid in one month what Jackie used to pay in three or four. But if her salary was anything like Rose's, she had plenty of pounds to spare even after rent. Rose hated that money was building in her account and she never used it. More than anything, she wanted to send some to her mum, but Jackie had never mentioned anything about mysterious funds arriving. Unless she'd been instructed not to…

It was something to think about.

They dropped Owen off just a few blocks away outside another set of posh apartments. Surprisingly, Suzie followed him out.

"You want up front?" Jack asked as Suzie got out.

"Yeah," Rose said, opening her door. She hopped in up front and shut the door behind her, watching through the tinted windows as her coworkers headed towards the flats together. "She doesn't…live here too?"

"Nope."

"Wow. They're not even trying to hide it," she muttered as they drove off.

He chuckled. "Nope."

"God, if this is what Owen's like when he's getting regular shags, I don't even wanna know what he's like when it's been a while."

Jack burst out laughing and about hit a telephone. Rose shrieked alarm, gripping the sides of her seat like she hadn't done since the last time she sat on the jumpseat during a wild TARDIS flight. "You're as bad as the Doctor!" she accused.

"But twice as handsome."

"Well…" she drawled, unclenching her fingers.

He glanced between her and the road several times, mouth opening and closing as if he planned to protest, then frowned crossly at the road in front of him. She giggled then lapsed into silence.

"Rose…" he began slowly. "Why did you go after that weevil alone?"

Rose sighed. She knew this had been coming. "Owen and Suzie goaded me into it."

"And you let them?"

"What else could I do, Jack? If I backed out, I'd look like I couldn't handle it or I was afraid. Same thing if I called you, plus they'd know I wasn't afraid to tattle. I had to prove I could hold my own and that was the only way."

"Hmm," he muttered and she couldn't tell who he was cross with. "And do you think it worked."

"Yeah."

"Do you think it made it worse?"

She frowned. "How do you mean?"

"Well, you proved to us that they're sentient enough to recognize they're being spoken to, which shouldn't come as a surprise to them considering your talent. Except, that weevil didn't consider you a threat. They consider everyone to be a threat and they always respond in one of two ways: fight or flight. It did neither with you until you showed it you were to be reckoned with."

"How's that bad?"

"Because the only creatures they don't attack on sight are their own kind."

Rose's eyes widened. "Shit," she breathed.

"Exactly."

"I-I mean, I have had certain races treat me a little differently than they did Martha or even the Doctor, sometimes people could sense things, but—god, I didn't even think."

"It's not your fault," he assured her. "And I'm not mad at you. This could be important later on and, hey, you've taught us more about the weevils. But I just want you to be prepared for what you might face tomorrow when the team shows up. They're going to want answers."

She exhaled in a sharp puff and rested her forehead against the cool glass. "But I don't even know."

"I doubt they'll accept that."

"Can't you just tell 'em to bugger off?"

"That's not gonna work forever. Now, I'm not saying you have to, but maybe you should consider telling them the truth about how you know all these languages."

Rose gave him a look. "You expect me to tell them that I have a telepathic connection with a sentient inter-dimensional time/space ship that translates for me? Do you also want me to tell them I live with Torchwood's most wanted and that I'm from the future while I'm at it?"

"No," he assured her. "But I think you're going to have to tell them part of the truth. Just enough that they'll accept your answer and no more than you're comfortable with—and, yeah, I know you'd rather they be kept in the dark entirely, but they're you're teammates. You're gonna have to trust them sooner or later. Right now, though, what you tell them is up to you. I won't order anything, but I recommend you don't lie to them. And, no, lying by omission doesn't count in this case."

She exhaled softly and closed her eyes. Easier said than done.

The next morning, Rose took her sweet time getting ready. It was weird having a small closet again instead of one that expanded and had new outfits appear periodically, but thanks to Jack and a gaggle of eager women he'd charmed at the mall, she had a good selection to choose from. She didn't foresee any excursions today so she chose a pair of jeans, a cream t-shirt, light brown sweater, and trainers. She brushed her teeth twice, and made sure to count out exactly one hundred strokes of her hairbrush, then spent another ten minutes with a curling iron. After that she did her makeup, returned her things to her room, and headed for the kitchen where she proceeded to kill another fifteen preparing and eating oatmeal.

When she could waste no more time, she finally descended into the main Hub where, sure enough, the entire team was already at work. She managed to make it down to the second level before she was noticed and by the time she was on the main floor, all three of her coworkers were watching her. She wondered which of them would be the one to ask first.

Unless… The sudden thought brought her up short. So far her approach had been to keep everything close to the vest, to let out harmless bits of information here and there but to not reveal anything potentially damning unless she was forced. Now she was faced with a situation where she was going to have to reveal something she considered damning and up until now she'd been planning to wait until they made her. But there was another way and maybe, just maybe, it'd make things better in the long run.

Rose sat down in her desk chair and took a deep breath. I can do this. She turned around. Owen was sitting at his terminal, watching her. Suzie was with Tosh at her terminal and both of them were pretending to be interested in something on the screen. "Hey, um… Tosh, Suzie, Owen?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, trying to decide how best to say what needed to be said. "About last night—"

"You gonna tell us why the weevil didn't try to kill you?" Owen guessed.

"I…" Rose looked down at her hands in her lap. "I really can't answer that." He scoffed and she raised her head. "No, seriously, I can't. I don't know why. I've never encountered anything quite like a weevil before. Maybe if I knew more about them I could guess but…" She shrugged helplessly and swallowed. "B-but it understood me when I spoke, I'm sure of it."

"Did it respond?" Tosh queried.

Rose shook her head. "But it definitely understood me which means they have a language…of sorts. They just never speak it. Or maybe it's something that isn't spoken. It could be telepathic, which also makes sense."

"How so?"

She swallowed again. Now or never. "Because I'm telepathic."

The curiosity slipped off Tosh's face, replaced with pure shock. Owen's eyes bugged out of his head and Suzie's jaw dropped. Rose saw Jack standing in his doorway, observing the scene silently. Their eyes met for a moment and he raised his eyebrows.

"Well, not entirely telepathic," she went on quickly. "Okay not at all, really, but I do have certain abilities related to telepathy. Like…my translating thing, it's all done telepathically."

Owen leaned forward in his chair, suddenly very interested. "How? The human brain can handle some level of telepathy but not innately and something like this—"

"I'm not the only one. There's been loads of others who've had this before. Jack did." She nodded to the ex-Time Agent. "But it's gone from him now, his link to the source of it was broken. I'm not sure when it kicks in, exactly, but do have some idea of how it works. All speech is translated in my head for me, it's automatic, and I can't stop it. Then, when I talk, it selects the dominant language of the area or the dominant language of the person I want to talk to and that's what I speak. Mostly. It's complicated, alright? But that's how I could understand Po and that's how the weevil could understand me."

"But how?" Tosh asked.

"And why?" Suzie added. "Why would you need something like that?"

"I'm a traveller," Rose reminded them. "It's so much easier without having to worry about language barriers."

"But how?" Tosh repeated.

Rose tapped her head with her pointer finger. "Alien tech."

"There's an alien inside your brain?" Owen exclaimed, looking quite alarmed.

Rose's brow furrowed in confusion. "No?"

"It's alien technology that works telepathically," Jack interrupted, coming to her rescue. "There is a two way connection between her mind and the translator source. Her brain sends the information to the translator and it cycles back the information in the appropriate language. It's instantaneous, too, so she hears everything in real time. And, no, before you ask, the translator doesn't record what it receives."

For a moment, no one said anything. Each of the three seemed to be processing what they'd learned and considering it. Suzie was staring at her feet, Tosh at the floor, and Owen directly at her. Rose shifted nervously in her seat. This was it: the moment of truth. Either they'd accept her or they wouldn't. She wasn't sure what she'd do if they didn't.

"How come you never said anything?" Owen asked.

"Because I had no way of knowing how you react," she answered honestly. "I knew what Torchwood One would do. You've all insisted you're different but at the core, both branches are the same. Don't deny it." She gave Jack a hard glare. "Don't. You know I'm right." To the others, "And there's people I have to protect. People that would be at risk…people who are at risk just by me being here. I couldn't trust that one of you wouldn't…out me to Torchwood One…or make it your personal mission to locate anyone else who might be like me."

Tosh shifted uncomfortably.

"And I would rather keep them safe than let you all in on the big secret before I think you've earned it."

With that, Rose folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, waiting. None of them moved, except for Owen, who finally looked away from her. Seconds passed in silence and Rose's heart rate refused to slow. She was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to talk when Suzie finally did.

"Thank you."

Two simple words that could hold as much or as little meaning as the speaker wanted. Coming from Suzie in that moment, they were enough to lift some of the weight pressing down on Rose.

"I won't tell anyone," she promised.

"Me, neither," Tosh added.

Everyone turned to look at Owen. He studied her critically, sizing her up, weighing the options. Suzie's expression hardened and Jack cleared his throat loudly, pointedly. Owen glanced at him briefly. "You're not telling us everything."

"No," Rose agreed matter-of-factly.

He nodded slowly, accepting this. "Alright then."