Reply To: Better, But Not Different

[Keb]

I’m hoping that the point they get to (we ARE still in the middle of their story) is that Belle cannot make Rumple change for her. If/when he gives up the dagger/power, he must do it for himself, otherwise it will never stick, no matter how much he loves her or his children.

His love for them may be part of why he chooses to give it up, but it ultimately has to be a decision he makes freely to better himself. Anything less, and the moment he doesn’t have that outside support, he will fall right back into his hole. That’s exactly what happened when he took the power back–he’d become a hero, he’d shaken off the darkness, and Belle left him anyway…so he took it back the first chance he got. Likewise, in S3, he’d become a hero, died to save his son and true love, and he got resurrected and lost his son anyway (and wound up Zelena’s slave for a year)…so he fell back into manipulating, lying, and clinging to his power.

I do believe that the only way for Belle and Rumple to move forward in a way that works for both characters is for him ultimately to surrender the power in some way, but it has to be HIS choice. Just as Belle now has to make her own choice about what she’s willing to live with to get what she wants.

I don’t think Rumple was wrong in his observations, at least not completely. Belle DOES like the darkness, and from his perspective, she dumped him again as soon as he was exactly what she SAID she wanted…and took him back when he had the darkness again (even if she didn’t know that). He also knows how the Curse affected people’s personalities/alter egos, having experienced it himself; I think that Lacey represents a part of Belle that a) was always present, if suppressed and b) is almost certainly still in her somewhere, as We Are Both was supposed to suggest. She’s said herself that she loves all of him, including the darkness. But she’s not wrong to want him to stop murdering the peasants, either; I think she’d be happy with his having the power to do so if a) he wasn’t choosing it over her and b) he wasn’t murdering the peasants. Those were the two breaking points for her in 4A.