Jason had written him a letter each week. They had come in the mail. Eight o'clock almost on the dot every Sunday the mail man would drop it off. Eddie would run outside to collect it along with whatever bills had come along with it, and he'd read it over breakfast while Aunt Marla read through scripts or went over the casting calls. He'd share a particularly funny joke or anecdote with her and she'd laugh and sometimes say she dreaded ever having Jason on set with Eddie. When that happened Eddie'd laugh too and say she should be prepared, because it was happening.
Eddie had always liked to imagine it was the same with Jason. That his penpal laughed over his letters with Batman over breakfast, or dinner seeing as they were so nocturnal they probably had meals switched around. He couldn't imagine the jokes about Eddie visiting Gotham with how territorial Batman was, but the rest of it.
They'd been planning on Jason paying a visit to Hollywood, fulfilling Aunt Marla's fears of having such a drama queen on her set. Kids on set, unless they were actors, and Eddie didn't always get along with those, were a rarity and Eddie had been looking forward to having someone his age to hang out with. Jason had been looking forward to seeing what went into making movies beyond what the 'behind the scenes' people would show. Eddie and Jason had only gotten to meet in person a couple of times and that had always been for work stuff, this was going to be just for fun. They'd already worked out a list of the things they'd do and the places they'd visit. Between their schedules, it was going to take a couple of months, but it would be worth it.
Then the letter had come early. Eddie had gotten it around six on a Wednesday, he'd been sent home to study for a while after a day of gophering. Jason had gone out of the country to look for his mom, he was so excited that Eddie wouldn't help but be excited with him, if Jason wound up with a new adress, he'd write Eddie with it.
He never wrote Eddie. Sunday after Sunday, eight o'clock passed and Jason never wrote back. Eddie got Aunt Marla to take him down to the post office to see if the mail might have gotten lost.
The letters had stopped.
"Don't worry, he's probably just too busy to sit down and write." She'd told him, turning the baseball cap he'd been wearing backwards back to the front. "You should try calling."
"Yeah okay." Eddie had replied, not wanting to make a big deal about it. Not wanting to think too much of the sick feeling in his gut and the numbing, prickly feeling reaching down to his fingertips that told him he should have been worrying. A lot.
Eddie had gone home planning on calling, but it had taken until he'd gotten there for him to realise he didn't have a number to call. He'd never asked for one, never needed to, because the letters had been more fun.
It didn't take long after that for Eddie's worry to grow and keep growing, but he never got in touch to find out why. Every Sunday at eight o'clock he checked the mail box. There was never a letter. He checked it on the other days too, Monday to Saturday and then Sunday too. He checked at night and in the mornings, whenever he was home and taking a break from his lessons. No letters.
Maybe Jason didn't want to be involved with superheroes anymore. Maybe be his mom didn't want him to. Maybe Jason was staying in some other country now and the mail took a long time to arrive. Five months was a really long time though, but maybe when he got Jason's new address they could exchange emails instead.
Maybe Jason had made new friends and didn't want one like Eddie, who it took two weeks to get a reply from anymore.
He told himself he could deal with it, he still had Aunt Marla. He could deal with it.
It had been seven months since the letters had stoppes that Eddie got the news. Robin was back in Gotham, after an absence of six months, he'd shown up at Batman's side like nothing had happened.
The news specifying that it was like nothing had happened meant that something had happened. Shame, hot and slimy curled up in Eddies chest at the thought that Eddie's friend might have been in hospital all this time and he was too busy wallowing to look into it.
So the next day, he found the number of Wayne Enterprises and he called. The secretary lady said Mister Wayne wasn't in. Eddie kept calling and calling, he begged the number off Mister Wayne's home phone off her. She wouldn't give it to him until he told her he was Jason's friend and he needed to contact Mister Wayne about him.
Eddie was too elated to hear the sadness in her voice when she gave him the number.
"Thanks!" He'd chirped at her in his most cheerful voice before he'd hung up.
The first time he called, nobody answered, Eddie almost suspected the number of being fake before he buried the thought along with all the negative things he'd started to think of Jason in the long time since he'd heard from the other boy.
The second time he called, an elderly British man had answered with a very formal. 'You've reached Wayne Manor, how might I be of assistance this afternoon?'
"Uh, oh. hey you must be Alfred, right?" Eddie had replied, matching the name from the letters to the voice. "This is Eddie, uh Bloomberg, can I talk to Jason? I..."
'I apologize, but Master Jason is not in.' Alfred had said, a wobbly, watery tremble running through his otherwise stiff voice. Then he'd hung up, Eddie was left pouting at the receiver and listening to the dial tone. He hadn't even asked for a message.
Eddie had shrugged it off as that just being how really rich people were. He decided he'd call again when he was done with his homework, thinking Jason would be back by then. Something kept him from doing it until the next night.
Nobody answered. Not the next time or the next five times.
'Hello?' It was a boy who answered eventually. Younger than Eddie and Jason, but he had that same tone as the child stars Eddie didn't get along with. 'Wayne Manor.'
"Can I please talk to Jason?" Eddie asked again. "I haven't heard from him in..."
'Jason's not here, stop calling.' He was about to hang up, Eddie could tell.
"Can you tell him I called then? Please! And get him to call Eddie back on this number?' Eddie blurted out quickly.
'Jason's not here anymore.' The kid said. 'You're upsetting Alfred, so stop calling.' And he hung up.
Eddie was left staring at the receiver again, but this time he wasn't confused. This time he felt like he was going to throw up, and he didn't know why. Aunt Marla found him an hour later with tears in his eyes and he couldn't tell her why.
The letters didn't come back. The need to know why itched at Eddie, the feeling that something horrible had happened wouldn't leave him. It was a few months before he found the courage to try calling again. He'd ask to talk to the boy, just to ask, just so he could know. But his number had been blocked.
He'd been drafting an email in his head as he paged through the tabloid section of a magazine, very formal and polite, for Mister Wayne, just to ask when he'd come across the article. 'WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JASON TODD?' Eddie had been prepared to laugh at it, went into it immediately with the intent of finding something in into tease his friend about before he remembered that he couldn't. Then, his eyes scanned the first line.
'The death of Jason Todd (15) in a...'
Wait, the death? Eddie read it nine times. He wrote the email, much less formal and polite than he'd drafted it. There was no reply. So he wrote another and another and another. Each one angrier than the last. There was never a reply. No explanation, no answer for any of his questions. His IP was blocked.
Was it true? How had it happened? Why had nobody told him? Why hadn't he been invited to the funeral? There'd been only five people at Jason's funeral, why hadn't Eddie been invited? He should have been. They should have told him, why hadn't they...
It didn't help. Jason was gone. He was never coming to visit. He was never going to write another letter. Eddies friend was gone and he wasn't going to come back, not ever and nobody had told Eddie.
Again, Aunt Marla had found him and this time, she had to hold him until he could breath.
The last letter had been from Jason, Eddie had never gotten the chance to reply.
Aunt Marla promised she'd take him to visit Gotham, to visit Jason's grave and say goodbye like he'd never gotten the chance to, when they got back from scouting out the location for her new movie. Eddie had asked to stay at the hotel so he could draft a letter to leave at the grave.
"You're sure?" Her smile had been tentative, gentle as she'd nudged his shoulder. "We're doing the scouting in a helicopter."
"Aunt Marla I'm a superhero." He'd rolled his eyes like he wasn't dreading going out right then. "I've done cooler things than riding in a helicopter." For years after that he'd be grateful he'd tried to smile back at her, he'd hate himself for not trying harder.
Eddie never finished writing the letter. He never visited Gotham.
Aunt Marla never came back. The helicopter had gone down in a freak accident.
She was never coming back.
Uncle Daniel wouldn't talk to him anymore.
There was never another letter.
Eddie was alone.