Footsteps.
A strange heartbeat.
A calling bird.
The boy stands at the edge of the precipice, looking down at the endless night beneath. He closes his eyes, testing his balance, leaning forward just enough to send his blood pumping faster through his veins.
Above him is a strange world, one unexpected and unsure. He feels shreds of it fall to him, swirling through his mind, his heart, his soul. He feels... Not complete, nowhere near it. Nothing could make him perfectly whole again. But he feels somehow a little more full, a little more finished. He breathes it in, chest constricting at the shocking, heavy sweetness, spiced with something that feels the way cinnamon tastes.
Below him is something even more uncertain. He can't tell if it is a life or a death, but it is foreboding enough to be either. It wafts up slowly, barely reaching his neck. The torn edges of the hazy world above him shift to avoid the poisonous aura. They drift back, pulling away from this new feeling.
He chokes.
He can't breathe.
The tendrils of smoke from the world below fill his vision and his lungs, driving all air out and destroying the remnants of that heady, filling scent from above. He panics, breathing out heavily to banish the painful essence of the pit from his body. But when he breathes back in, there is more. It thickens, driving straight through his airways to the deepest part of his subconscious, instilling fear so directly in him that he can't think and he's drowning and he just needs to-
He jumps.
For a spilt second he hangs in the air between the worlds, hoping with all his being that he flies upward, upward into that strange feeling of losing himself, of being free.
He falls.
The absolute darkness beneath him wraps around his body, pulling him away from what he wanted, what he would've given everything for, even his own identity. He tries to fight the blackness, struggling against the weight that fills him so completely he isn't sure if it wasn't a part of him to begin with. He thrashes, but the thickened substance dulls his movements, securing him in position and dragging him ever downwards. He opens his mouth to scream and the horror pours in, no longer thick smoke but a sludge that clogs his mind and body.
He can't see.
He can't hear.
He can't think.
He can no longer feel anything.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a broken voice calls out a name.
Logan!
It is only a moment before that, too, is silenced.
Julian had cried before, on set. But this night, curled into a ball and tangled in the hotel's bedsheets, is the first time that he sobs.