I still think that if Bae had come home after living in NL for a long time, he would have come home (and not by random chance) at a time when Rumple and Belle were already living together because Rumple would still be in the process of trying to get the Dark Curse set up.
Depends how old Nealfire is in these FTL scenes, but he was 14 in NL, and has to be at least mid-20s in these scenes, if not older. That means he’s been back in FTL for at least 10 years. So you’d have to subtract at least 10 years off Belle’s current age to get the age she was when she got with Rumple, if Rumbelle were together already when 14 year old Bae came back from NL.
*goes to sit in Rumbelle corner and glare*
*cookie*? You know I love me some Rumbelle as well, so even though this AU theory seems rather diabolical of me, I’m just saying, it could be one explanation. And it wouldn’t be a permanent thing, it wouldn’t even really be REAL. Rumbelle would still be alive and together in real world present day. If anything, how much you hate the idea makes me think even more that it might be something they’d do, because they’d want to solicit that, “MENOLIKEY” reaction to the AU, because in turn, it makes actual present day look much more appealing.