Were they even words, or just a feeling that curled up in the vague direction of Aubrey’s ears like indefinite tendrils of smoke from the depths? He couldn’t be sure, not with the thrum of blood rushing inside his own head or the broken-glass scrape of air dragging in and out of his lungs. Couldn’t be sure of anything really, not while he dangled there like a… what was the part of a bell that hung in the middle and made all that noise? The clapper, yeah, some absurd and distant part of Aubrey’s brain supplied the word in random intrusion, the same way that he always thought about his mom’s shortbread recipe whenever he fired a gun. He was a clapper, suspended in nothingness and about as useful.
But where is here?
The million-dollar question, as Aubrey’s arms started to burn with the effort of supporting his own weight. Degrees exponentially hotter even than the pain he had once felt in his elbow, way back in another life. Okay, so Jude was somewhere, which was better than being nowhere, and either better or worse than where Aubrey was now. (But probably worse, let’s be real.) And if Aubrey was going to be any more use than the dulled metallic clamour of a bell rung, he had to help himself before he could help his hunting partner. Secure your own oxygen mask first in a plane crash, etc etc.
And without really knowing what he was grabbing at, Aubrey tightened the curl of his good arm around the thing to which he was latched and groped through the dark with the other, splayed fingers moving until - yes, yes, there, the splintered edge of what he hoped to all gods past and present were the floorboards of the shop. And with a few more choice expletives, most of them decidedly filthy and french, Aubrey kicked furiously at the sucking blackness of the air beneath him until he managed to swing one foot up and hook it on the edge. It was slippery going (“I am so fucking burning these shoes,” he gritted out to nobody as he dug nails into floorboards and slowly, painstakingly hauled himself halfway to supposed safety) but it was going, at least.
“Still there, Jude? I mean -” pause, panting, voice raw like pulverized meat as he pulled himself the last few inches out of the gaping hole and collapsed on his stomach, gasping for air. A long moment passed before he was pushing up onto all fours, face angled towards where he’d last heard the man’s voice. “Still wherever you… were? Are? Please say yes, okay, don't leave me here.”