Well I was working on more tokusatsu but then this came into my brain and wouldn't go away til I wrote it. I'll be using the same themes list here as in my KR Double collection, but updates may be more sporadic.

Theme #14 – Smile

Spoilers: None

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The Doctor, like most people, had a variety of smiles, and Donna Noble had learned to interpret pretty much all of them.

There was the 'I have no idea what I'm doing and I love it' smile, which was usually (if not always) followed by them landing hip-deep in serious trouble.

Closely related to that one was the 'brilliant idea' smile. This one had taken Donna a while to recognize, because it usually only showed up for a few seconds, after which he usually ran off like a jackrabbit or started talking so fast it took all her focus to understand even half of what he said. She'd gotten quite good at spotting it though, since whatever the idea was usually involved getting them out of whatever trouble they'd ended up in.

Then there was the 'you are so brilliant I could kiss you' grin. She'd seen him use it on Martha, Jenny, and several other people they'd met along the way. But she studiously ignored any time he directed it at her.

On a balance, whatever nuances were behind it, she preferred the Doctor's smile to the grimaces and frowns he sometimes got when they were in a particularly undesirable situation. There was one exception though, the one smile of his she absolutely hated seeing, because it wasn't a smile at all. She saw it after something terrible had happened, after something had shaken him to his core and left a scar there, when he forced his lips to smile but that was as far as it got, when the look in his eyes was still pained and haunted. The 'I'm always all right' smile.

The first time she'd seen it, or something close to it, was the first time they'd met, that disastrous Christmas a lifetime ago. She hadn't really understood the depth of it, or his words back then, until she knew the full story of Rose. Now she sometimes caught herself wondering what would have happened if she hadn't been transported into the TARDIS that day. She wondered what he would do if he faced that kind of pain on his own.

Then, in The Library, she'd met River Song. So many questions, and so much pain, had come from that chance meeting. The Doctor had "saved" River, and smiled that same smile because, massive consciousness-preserving hard drive or not, she had still died to protect him. Worse, she hadn't recognized Donna herself, and Donna was afraid of what that could mean. Afraid for her own life, certainly, but more than that, afraid that it meant the Doctor would be alone.

She wished she hadn't learned to interpret that smile. She wished she could believe that he was as happy-go-lucky as he usually acted, but that would be a betrayal. He was her friend, and she'd face the painful side of that as willingly as she did the joyful side.

Now, she watched him pause in his bouncing around the console, his eyes locked on her as she realized, for the first time, that he'd been talking and she hadn't heard a single thing. "Donna, are you all right?"

She jolted back into the present and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine." He didn't believe her any more than she believed him when he said stuff like that. His attention moved back to the console, fingers deftly flipping switches and turning levers.

"Well! As I was saying, there's this planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Very relaxing, very educational. We should go there for some down time!"

He looked at her again, and smiled. And she let the worries drift away from her mind, because this was his 'I know just what will make you feel better' smile, and she wanted to enjoy while she could.

"Sounds great, but do we ever really have 'down time'?"

He grinned at her, and she smiled back.