Oh for sure, there’d have to have been some change in how exactly Bae got out of NL, because like you say, that was controlled by Pan. As far as we know, Bae hitched a ride on the Shadow to get outta there, but we also know that the Shadow started out as a separate entity from Pan, and we don’t know exactly how connected it was to Pan around the time when Bae left. Maybe the Shadow still had enough independence that it rebelled against Pan, and helped Bae get out of NL in an alternate way/time?
What you suggest about Rumple having sacrificed himself to Pan, in order for Bae to be saved, is a totally plausible option as well.
The more I think about this AU thing and the potential it could have for a Neal centric ep, the more interesting I find it. People who don’t like Neal hold it against him that he didn’t try to stay with Emma, and still get her to break the Curse somehow. People who do like Neal say that there was really no way that he could have stayed and still had the Curse broken. He left her to fulfill her destiny, so that fate could take its course. If he’d tried to defy fate by staying, then “terrible things” (Adam’s words) would have happened. As much as I’d love to see an AU that shows what exactly those “terrible things” would have been, I think that a similar message could be conveyed if we see him defy fate in how/when he got out of NL, and they show the affect it would have had. Moral of the story would still be the same: when Nealfire defies fate, things don’t work out like they were supposed to.
If Bae’s escape from NL was different, and in turn changed events in a way that he and Hook are there in FTL as adults before Emma’s even been born, then neither side of the triangle can be happy with that. CSers wouldn’t like Bae for having forced the change that meant that Emma wasn’t around to get with Hook. They could say, “He was wrong to have interfered with fate.” Yet those same people currently say, “He was wrong to have resigned himself and Emma to fate.” Can’t have it both ways.
So I guess on a certain level, this particular AU concept appeals to me as someone who wishes that people who hold certain things against Neal would be able to be more open minded about the situation he found himself in and the choice he made, and there could be potential for that to happen with this particular AU chain of events. That wasn’t my motivation for starting to think about this whole AU possibility, but the more I think about it, (and frankly I’ve thought about it way too much :-P), it’s where I’ve ended up at the moment.
Anyway, as of right now we really know nothing about what direction they’re going in. Any and all theories right now are based on a frillion guesses and assumptions, and the actual show could go in any direction. All I know for sure is that it’s gonna kill me to wait until March to figure out what’s actually going on.