"Come on, now," the Doctor ordered, though his voice was gentle. "I jus' need to see your back so the dermal regenerator can fix you up. Sorry 'bout that, by the way. The Old Girl landed us a bit earlier than I intended."
Rose hesitated, not looking at the Doctor's face, focusing instead on his leather jacket. "'M fine," she told him quietly. "Doesn't hurt. I don't need the dermal-whatsit."
"Please, Rose. The Loranians have venom secreted in their claws. I just need to make sure that you aren't infected, 'sall."
Rose sighed, then pulled her shirt off, turning her back to the Doctor. She heard him suck in a sharp breath. "Rose, what're all these?"
"Scars," she said simply. "An' a reminder."
"A reminder?" the Doctor asked, for once abstaining from a sarcastic remark. She could hear the curiosity, concern, and barely concealed anger in his voice, but she didn't dare turn around.
"A reminder. Of how I lost my innocence, an' why you should never leave school for a guy," Rose whispered.
"Tell me."
Rose took a deep breath. "I was sixteen, he was twenty-one. Jimmy Stone. Was the guitarist in a band an' dead convinced he was gonna be famous. Mum hated him. God, she hated him." She laughed hollowly. "Said 'e was good for nothin', an' she was right, but I wouldn't listen. The sun rose an' set in Jimmy's eyes. I dropped out of school, moved in with 'im. Sometimes he'd let me sing with the band, an' I was so happy. First it was jus' sex, whenever he wanted it, whether I did or not. Then if I didn't 'perform' he'd bring in other girls. 'Course, by the end he was bringin' in a new girl every night, didn't matter what I'd do."
Rose paused when she heard the humming of the dermal regenerator, but the Doctor wasn't about to let her off the hook. "These scars, though. Rose, what did he do to you?"
"You're not gonna like it," she warned him softly.
"I need to know."
Rose shuddered, remembering. "I was takin' a shower." She stopped, looking pleadingly at the Doctor over her shoulder. "Please don' tell mum about this?"
"Jackie doesn't know?" He sounded surprised.
"Not 'bout all of it."
"I promise. This doesn' leave the TARDIS."
"I was takin' a shower," she started again. "Jus' got back from a shift at Henrick's, an' I was dead tired. He was drunker than I've ever seen him. He wanted a shag, right then an' there." She felt tears form in the backs of her eyes as she began to relive the memory. "Was the firs' time I told him no. He got so mad. Drug me out of the shower an'—" she couldn't finish her sentence as her throat choked up.
"C'mere," the Doctor murmured, scooping her into his arms. A fluffy blanket and a warm hum came from the TARDIS, and Rose managed to pull herself together enough to go on.
"He started to hit me, an' I got tired of it an' slapped 'im, like mum slapped you. Hard as I could. Tha' was my mistake. He grabbed my arm, an' just threw me across the room, into the mirror. It broke, an' cut my back to shreds. Broke my wrist, too. Told mum that I fell an' landed on it, an' she never saw the hospital bill. But it wasn't more than a week after I got out that Jimmy left me. Dunno why, an' I never saw him again."
The Doctor managed to tamp down his rage, rocking the crying Rose Tyler until she fell asleep, then tucking her into bed. Once he was in the console room, however, he let the Oncoming Storm take over.
"Do you have the date, Old Girl?" he asked the time rotor. She hummed an affirmation in his mind, and he saw that the coordinates were already set. "Good. Let's get that bastard."