Time (Eleventh Doctor!Reader x Various SNK) [6]

“Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically, run.”

The Atraxi eyeball hastily zooms back to its ship and leaves. Suddenly, I hear the familiar whirring sound, only it was coming from my pocket. I pulled out the key to the TARDIS that was glowing. I grinned and ran downstairs, briefly hearing shouts of confusion behind me, and into the dining hall, where the TARDIS stood, brand new and smoke free.

I rubbed my hands together in excitement, grinning up at the blue box. “Okay, what have you got for me this time?” I murmured and swiftly unlocked the doors, pushing them open. What I saw inside caused a wide grin to spread across my face and almost brought a tear to my eye.

The console room was even bigger, brighter, and curvier than before. With winding staircases, orange walls and teal light accents. It was so reminiscent of the human retro design culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and I loved it.

“Look at you. Oh, you sexy thing! Look at you.” Bouncing over to the control panel, I entered some coordinates, flipped the switch, and I was off!


*


Survey Corps soldiers stared at the place the mysterious blue box once was with mixed reactions; most were absolutely bewildered, others were disappointed, and one person was fuming.

Levi glared at the now empty space in the dining hall. “So she comes and goes as she pleases without so much as an explanation to what the fuck just happened?”

“She does that a lot, actually.” Armin says nervously. “She did that the first time Eren, Mikasa, and I saw her, five years ago.”

Hanji’s eyes were aflame as a grin spread across her face. “Did you see that weird projection that eyeball thing did? And the way she spoke to it was like she’d done that sort of thing before!” her glasses glinted. “I would have loved to study it… maybe if the Doctor comes back we can ask her what she knows?”

“That is if she actually does come back.” Eren grumbled, gaining a confused look from Mikasa. “She seems to have a screw loose or something. She’s unpredictable at best.” He elaborates.

Suddenly, Commander Erwin claps his hands loudly, gaining everyone’s attention immediately. “Alright, that’s enough! Back to your duties! All of you!”


*


One week later, during a training session with Levi’s squad, the familiar whirring sound filled the air. They all looked toward the sound only to see that same blue box from a week ago materialise in front of them. Whilst Levi scowled, Petra, Erd, and Gunther’s hands all hovered over their swords, while the young Jaeger boy just watched, wide-eyed.

The door opened and the Doctor emerged, grinning from ear to ear.

“Sorry about running off earlier.” She said, closing the door behind her. “Brand new Tardis, bit exciting. Just had a quick hop to the moon and back to run her in. She's ready for the big stuff now!”

Eren stumbled over to her hastily. “It's you. You came back.” He said, breathless.

The Doctor raised a brow at the boy. “Of course I came back. I always come back. Is there something wrong with that?”

“You haven’t changed your clothes.” Levi interrupts, raising a brow at her. The Doctor bristled, adjusting the tweed jacket and red bowtie.

“Well, I just saved the world.” She says simply. “The whole planet, for about the millionth time, you know? No charge. So, yeah, shoot me. I kept the clothes.” She pouts, folding her arms over her chest.

“Including the bow tie?”

She grinned, adjusting said piece again. “Yeah, it's cool. Bow ties are cool.”

“Captain Levi, what’s going on?”


*


Levi ignored his squad’s inquiries and, once again, I ended up being led to the castle where, once again, I met up with Erwin and Hanji. Levi dismissed Eren and the rest of his squad (despite Eren’s vehement protests), and sat me down in the Commander’s office in front of his desk. It was funny actually, I almost felt like I was a rebellious teenager about to be lectured by the school principal, though I wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Hanji and Levi stood on either side of Erwin and they were all staring at me.

Erwin broke the silence. “Who are you, Doctor?”

I quirked a brow at him. “This again? Really?”

Levi slammed his hands on the hardwood desk. “Stop avoiding the question, you shit!”

“Are you from another planet?” Erwin asked, watching me with a calculated gaze.

“Yeah. It was called Gallifrey and it was located on the opposite end of the galaxy from where we are right now.”

“Was?”

“It’s gone now. Destroyed.” I felt my hearts twinge as I felt that guilt set in once again. An air of tension washed over the room as those words left my lips. I could tell that the blonde was trying to think of an appropriate way to ask “how”, so I decided to save him the trouble. “I lose track of a lot of things, but that day is  one I will never forget.” I ran a hand through my (h/c) locks, breathing out a long sigh. “I was there for it all. It lasted at least four hundred years in a linear sense–”

“–Wait!” Hanji was suddenly in front of me, her hands slammed down on the armrests of my seat. Her eyes glinted with excitement behind her glasses. “Four hundred years? How is that possible?! How old are you?”

“Ah. That’s kind of complicated. To be honest, I’ve lost track. After all, constantly travelling backwards and forwards through time makes it difficult to measure one's lifespan at all.” I grinned sheepishly at the brunette. “Honestly, I could be a thousand years old or I could be a million, age is pretty irrelevant to me now.”

“What the fuck?” I heard Levi mutter under his breath.

“But, as I was saying before–” I gave Hanji a look. “–my home planet of Gallifrey was destroyed in – quite possibly – the largest and most destructive war in intergalactic history. The Time War. The war between my people – the Time Lords – and hateful creatures called Daleks.” I recounted the origins of the war to the trio.

“It was all so messy. People were dying left and right, planets were being destroyed in the crossfire… it was only a matter of time before the whole galaxy was destroyed.”

I breathed deeply, staring out the open window of Erwin’s office.

“So I did the only thing I could. I rejected my name. The other Time Lords called me ‘the Renegade’.” I scoffed. “By the last day of the war, the Daleks had destroyed every battle TARDIS and began to invade Gallifrey itself. A crucial battlefield was Arcadia, where I was fighting on the front lines. Arcadia was a city on Gallifrey, and our most secure stronghold. It had defences called sky trenches, which formed multi-layered armoured shields high in the atmosphere to prevent aerial invasion. It was thought to have been impossible to break through two of them, but in the last day of the conflict, the Daleks broke through all 400 of them. They then proceeded to bombard Gallifrey from space.

“I was desperate and did the only thing I could at this point: I blew it all up. Gallifrey disappeared in a silent flash as bright as a sun and all of the Daleks, having surrounded Gallifrey and bombarding it from space, suddenly became a spherical firing squad and destroyed themselves in a massive explosion. Centuries of fighting came to an end at the simple press of a button.”

I was trembling now. I had misjudged how much recounting the tale of my peoples’ demise would upset me.

“I committed mass genocide to end that war. Because of that, I am now the last of the Time Lords, set to wander the universe alone.”


*


Erwin, Hanji, and Levi stood in shocked silence as the (h/c) haired woman in front of them poured her heart(s) out in front of them. This woman, whose madness could rival Hanji’s, did all of that? Conflicting thoughts ran through their heads, ranging from “this woman is a dangerous, genocidal, warlord” to “she has had centuries of experience fighting an impossible battle, maybe she can help against the Titans?”

Hanji was first to speak. Her normally bubbly and vibrant voice was quiet and mature.

“You destroyed your people and your home?” she asked and the Doctor nodded her head in affirmation.

“Trust me, it wasn’t an easy decision and I’ve lived with that guilt for centuries. I thought I would die in the blast with the others, but I guess my punishment was to be the only survivor.” she shook her head and looked up at them with a determined look in her piercing (e/c) eyes. “You are having your own conflict now, aren’t you? With these… Titans?”

Erwin rested his chin on top of his hands, his elbows leaning on his desk. He raised a bushy brow at the confusing woman in front of him with an intrigued look in his blue eyes. He nodded and the Doctor sighed, running a hand through her hair.

“Well, what’s the story with them, then? What are they and what are they doing?”

Levi spoke up. “They’re stupid fucking giants that eat humans. They’ve been dormant for a hundred years, but five years ago a Titan that was taller than the walls smashed through and let all the other Titans in.”

Erwin continued. “There was massive devastation in the Shiganshina district of Wall Maria. Eren, Armin, and Mikasa witnessed everything first-hand.”

The Doctor tensed in her seat as she remembered the first time she met the trio was five years ago. They were being cared for by Armin’s grandfather at the time. The weight of their situation hit the Time Lord heavily. She looked between the three soldiers in the room and gestured for Erwin to continue, which he did.

“Since that day, refugees of Wall Maria evacuated to Wall Rose, where we are now. Resources have started to become scarce and people are becoming restless. A short while ago, another attack took place in the Trost district, where we just so happened to find out that one of our own had the ability to transform into a Titan.”

The Doctor cocked a brow at this.

“And who was that?”

“Eren Jaeger.”