My Brightest Star:

I can hardly get my paper and pencil out fast enough! I can't believe it's only been a year since my last letter, it feels much much longer than that. Well, technically the year never existed, but it has for me. You can't possibly imagine how agonizing it was for me to go a whole year with no paper or writing utensils on hand. I felt like I had been cut off from you again, just like in Canary Wharf, when I was all alone in that immensely large room in Torchwood. As I placed my hand on the empty white wall, I could feel a tiny spark of your presence, just for a second. That second I cherish. I could feel you, for a moment, up against that uninviting wall, both of us clinging desperately to what we had, to what had been cruelly snatched away in a moment's notice.

It has been a very long year, I'll try to sum up. I am afraid to put this pencil down, I have been longing to tell you all that's been happening, to somehow feel you again within this emptiness.

You remember Jack, Captain Jack Harkness, don't you? Of course you do, it's hard to forget a man like him, with all his annoying pleasantries and arrogant comments. You seemed quite fond of him though.

But I still miss those days, just you and me and Jack, traveling in the TARDIS, the best of friends. Until that fateful day at the Game Station, where the old me was destroyed and I left Jack behind. I am so sorry about that, but I had to. Jack had become an impossible thing. He was unable to die. He had become a fact, and I couldn't help but be repelled by him, even the TARDIS was too, she ran to the end of the universe just to shake him off. But of course, traveling through the Time Vortex didn't kill him, I don't think anything can now.

And it was you that did it to him Rose, well, technically, the Bad Wolf. The last great act of the Time War was life. It still frightens me when I think about how much power you had, how close you were to death. But at least you're safe now, and I'm a different man than who I was back then.

Jack misses you very much, but he's extremely glad to know that you had not died in the Battle of Canary Wharf, even though your name is on the list of the dead. I think I may have been permanently damaged if you had actually died, or even worse, fallen into the void. That horrifying thought chills me to the bone.

Remember when I told you what the Face of Boe told me on New Earth? He said "You Are Not Alone." Remember how I told you that he was wrong, that I truly am alone? Well, I was wrong, in a way. My friend from long ago, and my greatest enemy, the Master, had used a Chameleon Circuit and was living his life as Professor Yana at the end of the universe, unaware of his Time Lord status. That is, until we came along. He opened the fob watch and became the Master again, stealing the TARDIS and becoming Prime Minster of London back in Martha's time. I had just enough time to lock the controls to travel only to London and back to where he started.

Thankfully, Jack still had his "space-hopper" which allowed us to travel back and follow the Master. But he had already taken control, he had been in London for eighteen months already, living as Harry Saxon, the Prime Minister, with Lucy Saxon, his human wife, who knew his secret and stood by his side despite it.

Our plan to stop him was a failure, and the Master had complete control of the entire earth with his human-alien mutants obeying his every order. In that horrible year that followed, many people died. He reversed my ability to regenerate and turned me into an actual 900 year old man. Let me tell you, that was worse than the Chameleon circuit.

I think the one that suffered the most from this was Martha. She escaped and for a whole year, traveled across the world, spreading my name to all the people.

That was how we won, at the end of the Arch-Angel countdown, every person on earth was saying my name at the same time, which was transmitted across the radio signal, bringing me back to my current self again.

I knew the Master couldn't be freed or killed, so I said I would keep him in the TARDIS out of trouble. I had made the decision to stop running around, because I now had someone to care for. That is, until his wife shot him. I'm still surprised by the look of hatred on her face as her husband fell to the floor.

As he took his last breaths, I begged him to regenerate, but he wouldn't, being the stubborn fool he was, he would rather die than be locked up with me forever. And so my greatest enemy, yet once my closest friend died. I truly am alone in the universe once again.

I was able to reverse everything that the Master had done, by taking the Valiant ship back a whole year and making sure none of it had happened.

Right now I'm waiting for Martha to return from her mother's house. She has this look in her eye that I fear the year that never happened did something to her, as she, Jack, and everyone else on the Valiant still remembers. Jack decided to leave, saying how much he thought about his Torchwood team in the year that never was.

Oh, that's right, I forgot, Jack re-assembled Torchwood after it's fall in the battle of Canary Wharf. He rebuilt it for good, for what it really was meant to be: protection of the earth against hostile alien forms.

Martha's coming soon, so I better end this. I fear she may have something to tell me though.

-So alone without you-

Your Doctor