Oh my god, two in one night? What's wrong with me?

I wrote the first bit of this months ago, and I know the pacing is off but sweet god it's two thirty in the morning and so help if I can't feel productive.

Once, a long time ago, in a small village, there was a little girl named Molly. Molly was very small for her age, and mousy, and she always looked worried because her face just fell that way. Molly's favourite thing was reading, but people made of her for reading so much; she read so much because people made fun of her. Molly didn't have many friends, but she didn't mind very much.

Still, she thought, it would be nice to have one good friend.

Molly's daddy was a librarian, and every day he brought a book for her, and every day she would run home to meet him. Sometimes the books were stories; Molly's favourites were the ones about the sea, with pirates and mermaids and fish, and the ones about magic, with witches and dragons and princesses, even though Molly thought that if she were a princess, she wouldn't sit around waiting for a stupid boy to save her, because all the boys she knew weren't nice enough to do that. But even more than the stories, she liked the books about science, because when daddy ran out of answers, they told her why. Molly could even understand the books written for grown-ups and her daddy was always very proud of her when she finished one and told him all about it. Her favourites of these were the ones that talked about tiny things around you and inside you that you couldn't see happening.

Her mummy was a doctor, and she worked late a lot, but every Sunday, when almost everyone else in the little village was in church or still asleep, she would take Molly for a long drive down a long twisty road with the windows down, but not until she stopped at the grocery and bought two big loaves of bread. The twisty road led to a large pond that, in the Summer, Molly would sometimes see people paddle around on in boats. Molly always wanted to go in one of the boats, but mummy was afraid she would fall out; on your eighth birthday, which is a Sunday, she would say, we'll go in a rowboat for as long as you want.

The shallows of the pond were filled with bobbing white ducks, which they fed with the loaves. Sometimes they wouldn't leave until mid-afternoon because they would lose track of time, but every single time, Molly and her mum would get ice cream on the way back. Every Sunday, Molly had to try a new flavour, but she was allowed to get two scoops so she could still have strawberry, which was her favourite. When they got home, Molly's mummy tucked her into bed and kissed her nose and said "Goodnight, my smart, beautiful girl. I love you," and very night, Molly would whisper back "I love you, too, mummy."

One day when Molly was seven, daddy came and picked her up from school. When she saw the little black car puttering in the pick-up lane, Molly ran to it, opened the door and jumped into the passenger seat – Daddy never picked her up unless there was something important going on, like Christmas dinner or Mummy's birthday, but it wasn't the right time for any of those things, so something new must have happened.

But when Molly looked at her daddy, he was wiping tears from his cheeks, holding back more. Her bright smile faded, and she asked in a very frightened voice "What's wrong?" She'd never seen her daddy cry before except at sad movies when somebody died – or a dog. This was a different kind of crying, though – even a child as young as Molly could tell. It was a type of crying where the hurt was inside you and no matter what anyone did it wouldn't go away. Her teacher always said that a bag of peppermints could fix any problem, but Molly could see that it wouldn't fix this, whatever it was.

"Daddy?"

"Hello, Mollywog, he said, his voice cracking. "How was school?"

"Alright…" Molly frowned. "Daddy-"

"Just alright? What did you do?" Molly's daddy had learned a long time ago not ask "What did you learn?" because there were many days when Molly didn't learn anything at all, and she told him that.

"We did maths…Daddy, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, baby girl. Well, not nothing, it's just – I don't know. I don't know yet."

"Daddy, what's wrong! Why are you crying!"

Molly's daddy sighed a long sigh and out his head in his hands. "Let's go home."

At home, Molly's daddy explained that mummy had been in an accident on the way to work; her car had been hit very badly by a big truck.

She had died on impact.

Molly asked to go and read; daddy said she could. So she went and sat in the big chair by the window and read the biggest most complex book she could find. She lost herself in the words and the concepts until she didn't hurt anymore because her brain was working too hard to think about her mommy. That night, Daddy went to bed before she did and when she crawled into bed, she was alone and there was no soft kiss on the nose, no warm, beautiful face smiling at her from the doorway.

Molly whispered Mommy's goodnight to herself and sobbed herself to sleep.

Molly went to school the next day, and the two after that, and then it was Saturday, so again she took a book and read in the chair by the window.

On Sunday, Molly waited at the door for almost a minute before calling for Mommy to hurry up. She slapped her hand over her mouth and whispered a broken, cracking "I'm sorry."

After that, Molly went further inside her head. She made up an imaginary friend. That's what her dad called him, when he was talking to his friends and thought she wasn't listening, but Molly knew he wasn't. He was her Doctor.

He'd shown up at the door one day, looking disoriented. Daddy always said not to let strange people in when he wasn't at home, and while he certainly looked strange, he seemed like the good kind, so Molly let him in. "Daddy won't be home until after he's done work, but you can wait if you like," she said shyly.

"I'm not looking for your daddy, I came to see you. What's your name?" He began looking around, poking at the strange things her parents kept on the shelves, twirling in between them.

"Molly. But how could you have come to see me if you don't even know my name?" Molly frowned accusingly at the strange man in the bowtie.

"Because, Molly, I need help. Your help."

"But you're a grown-up," puzzled Molly. "Grown-ups don't need help from children."

"Oh, no, grown-ups always need help especially from children. Children are much smarter than grown-ups about most things, not silly things like mortgages and bills, but the really important things."

"Important things like what?"

And the answer, Molly found, was oh, so many important things, things that she had never imagined and things that didn`t make sense and couldn`t be measured and explained in books, and Molly being Molly, one day, she asked why.

"Because," the Doctor said, looking her straight in the eyes. "People are like the TARDIS. On the outside, they're small and they make sense and everything looks like it fits together, but on the inside they're exploding in every direction and they go on forever and sometimes they get lost in themselves and all they can find is one room or one hallway or they keep going until they're even more lost, and they forget to think about anything else even though they know it's there and they go crazy." And because the Doctor told her a long time ago that the TARDIS could be explained with numbers and science, she reckoned that was a pretty good answer.

And one day, when Molly was ten, they saw dead people. The Doctor told Molly to get back in the TARDIS, the where they had landed among piles of bodies was the wrong place, but Molly knelt beside a man with a child in his arms and touched his face.

"Doctor," Molly said slowly, "why are they dead?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, and he knelt too, running his sonic up and down a dead woman's body.

"Who killed them?"

"An army." The bodies were mutilated, by knives and guns and human hands, and the Doctor realized he couldn't fix this, and though he knew it was only history, he still felt sorrow.

"I mean who like the person. And why are they all here? Where did they come from? Did they live here?"

"I don't know."

He called her again to the TARDIS, and Molly closed their eyes, so the man and his son could rest. She wanted answers to her questions, she wanted to know why, and she wished desperately that she could talk to that man.

The desire to know those things never left Molly, and as she grew and saw more death, and more of life and its pain and its happiness she wanted to know the stories of those who had no one to tell them, and to make sure they were told, so when people ask her why she works in a mortuary, if she's feeling particularly confident and open to conversation that day, she'll answer, "Because it's quiet. There should be at least one voice in a mortuary."