Rather than going to NL as a child, however, I think Rumple could have been there as an adult, (sometime in between losing his son the first time and before the casting of the Curse)
I agree that he has been to NL some point during this (rather long) time frame because Felix calls him the Dark One, meaning Felix has to know Rumple AFTER he lost Bae. But that doesn’t mean Rumple wasn’t there before then. What if Rumple was trying to get the bean from Smee to go to NL and recruit PP’s help in finding his son. After all, it’s what PP does: he finds lost boys.
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"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"