Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20151207015752/@comment-24674051-20151207200733

Before Rumple sent Belle, he gave her a potion that would protect her from the curse of the town line. So there was no contradiction there.

As for Rumple not going to the vault, I can think of a few reasons why that might not have occurred:

1. Rumple was previously a dark one, and didn't need to go through that ordeal again. (weak reason, I'm sure, but possible).

2. more likely, in the past the darkness had taken up residence in the vault, except for the bit that was given to the current dark one. However, when Gold became the DO again, ALL of the previous Dark Ones were present, including the 2 present dark ones. That situation may have overridden the rule for reappearing in the vault.

3. All of the rules changed after Excalibur was reforged. (though how Gold managed to get the Dagger portion back is still a question in my mind at the moment).

And before anyone makes the comment, yes, I believe that the writers probably overlooked that piece of information regarding the appearance in the vault. But that does not mean that there aren't reasonable explanations to get them out of that slip.