Yeah, I haven’t figured out how come he didn’t go check out whether Belle was really dead either. I read on another board somewhere that somewhere that someone thinks EQ conjured up a spell while she was talking to Rumple in his castle before she started to tell him her “story” about what happened to Belle after he kicked her out of his castle. Because if you look at the video she is doing something with her hands over the tea set while he is spinning at the wheel and it is more than just pouring herself a cup of tea. I’ll admit it does look like she is doing some extreme tea preparation but I don’t know if I am convinced she is doing a spell. Rumple doesn’t drink the tea but he does stand somewhere around the spot where she would have been doing the “spell” so I wondered if the spell made him “believe” what she said so that he wouldn’t even bother checking out whether Belle was actually dead. That’s the piece of the Belle puzzle that has always greatly bothered be – knowing how Rumple knows that the EQ is always trying to trick him out of his power you would think he would immediately think she was lying about Belle just to hurt him. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t check to make sure it’s true.
Unless he DID know that she was really alive?? When he was beating Moe French he said “She’s gone, she’s gone, and she’s never coming back.” He never said “She’s dead.” Maybe he realized that Belle was his one weakness to voluntarily giving up his power because he loved her so much? Maybe he knew he couldn’t ASK the EQ to let Belle go because that would mean he was lowering himself to her? So maybe he still blames himself for Belle being locked up by the EQ because he didn’t do anything about it because he cared more about his power than going to the EQ and asking for her to let Belle go because he knew that Belle would be his downfall? That would still cause him to keep the cup as a momento and he did put the cup on a pedestal, just like he put Belle on a pedestal. Oh my, this could take an entirely different turn if he DID really know that Belle was alive but that the EQ had her but didn’t do anything about it. But maybe he assumes that Belle isn’t in Storybrooke now and that the only thing he has left of her now IS the cup. If that is the case, if he finds out that Belle is alive – oh my. Instead of HIM going crazy on Regina – suddenly that changes things and now Regina is the one with the power. Because both he and Regina may know that he would give up his power for Belle. Only the interesting twist in Storybrooke is that his power is really the knowledge he has – so he could technically be with Belle and STILL have power??