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Killian pressed another kiss to Emma’s skin, pouting as he posed his question.
“But would you still love me were I a worm love?”
Emma laughed, popping another piece of popcorn into her mouth as the movie continued to play in the background, detached from their conversation as it kept chugging along in its cheesy dialogue.
“ Yes, Killian, I’d still love you if you suddenly shrunk and transformed into a wriggly bug.” She ruffled her hands through his dark hair, unable to resist the temptation. “I’d turn myself into one to be with you and we’d be a happy little worm family.”
Killian glared at her, protectively curving his hand around her stomach. “Not with the babe you wouldn’t.”
“ Alright.”
“Thank you for listening to your dashing rapscallion of a husband for once Swan.” Killian grinned, waggling his brows up at her from his spot on her lap. It had always been one of his favourite spots but its sentimentality had grown considerably in the last few months.
“ Whoa babe.” Emma warned. “I’d hunt your worm ass down and force you to come back. You’re not getting away that easily.”
“I’d very much enjoy that love. Hunt me down whenever you wish.”
Killian propped himself up to give Emma a sound kiss and then lowered back down into her lap. As he pressed his lips to her stomach to where their daughter rested, a roaring wave of light shot through them and out across Storybrooke.
Her heart plunged down her throat. The weight of her husband had simply just vanished.
“Killian?!” Emma shrieked in horror and scrambled up in the bed as fast as her stomach would allow.
He was.
He was a worm.
But he wasn’t so shocked as she.
He didn’t have space to hold that shock. His eyes screamed in terror as they shrunk into nothing. The blinding light scalded his photoreceptor cells and he yelled until his throat was hoarse. But his efforts were futile, no sound ricocheted out of his vocal chords out into the void he was now in.
Writhing forward, his muscles pitched his head down into the folds of sheets that were now mountains to his tiny form. His gizzard, full and content before, was now demanding more organic matter to shovel into it.
His mind didn’t retain much at that moment, but it was full of fear for his Swan’s reaction. She must be terrified and absolutely distraught and that was simply unacceptable in his worm brain. He struggled forward again, trying to grasp a good hold on the bed around him as he suffocated in the cloud of fabric that had become vast oceans and peaks.
He had been down one hand before in his human form, but relying on hydraulics and the segmented quality of his body instead of three very moveable limbs was agony.
With no sense of where or how it happened, his body was disconnected from the ground and in sudden freefall as air angrily whipped around him. The twists and turns discombobulated him. He had no connection to sight. To his hearing.
All he felt was the vibrations of a large being moving back and forth above him. He was in its hold, held prisoner to the whims of the sky.
But then he plopped down onto a smooth surface. It was unlike the skin that surrounded his own body, but it was nice and warm, sending tickles through him as it swayed underneath. He would be content to lie here until the rest of his days.
But that would not be.
He was once again transferred elsewhere. The dirt was nice and moist against his drying skin but he missed the lovely warmth of the hand he had been held safely in before. It was more familiar to him.
But it did not return. He had no sense of time as a worm. He wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. But he dug and he dug, gorging himself on the matter around him and coating his body in dirt. He compacted himself further and further into the soil until his head smacked against something hard and rebounded. His path changed and changed and changed as his head smacked the same thing over and over again. He could not escape the soil and he could not escape the prison he was in. He could not escape his body.
The sadness overwhelmed his small body with no outlet for it to be released. It built and built inside him as he trudged forwards with no end in sight. No tears came and he feared he would explode with the longing and grief. He convulsed, seizing as he swam through the soil.
But wait, he felt those warm hands pluck him out once more, pulling him closer and closer to that feeling he had longed for but could not name.
And his photoreceptor cells exploded into eyes and his segmented body burst into arms and legs and structured organs once more.
The first sight with his returned human eyes was blurry with tears, from all the accumulated feelings and pain his worm body could not process before. But he knew who it was even with the way the sight was a blurry watercolour before him. With a gasp he fell to his knees, hugging the owner of the warmth that was his saving grace in his most distressing form.
“Emma.”