From Tumblr: Ask - About Rumple's POV during A Bed of Thorns ch. 89-90

[nym_wibbly]

Tumblr user stoicpantomime asked me if I had thoughts on how Rumple's side of A Bed of Thorns chapters 89/90 played out, and at what point he came to his senses.

I know bits of it. It helped that Belle didn’t dignify the accusation with a desperate attempt to convince him he was wrong. Even while indulging himself in a tantrum of self-pity, and probably beyond hearing a sensible argument, he could see for himself that she didn’t behave like a guilty person. He’d had that scene half-planned ever since he married her; he was poised for her to leave him or betray him, and pounced with relish, relief almost, when he thought she finally had. He was working from some internal script and, as he’d often found before, Belle didn’t hit her cues.

He calmed down in his work room after she’d gone to Odstone, and it was then that the half-wanting-it-to-happen and the gloating about being right wore off. She’d actually gone, for good as far as he knew, and it dawned on him that he still wanted her in is life even if she had got a baby by some other man – even if she had betrayed him. Which led him to actually think it through, to remember that she’d tried to tell him she was pregnant, and been upset with him for brushing the possibility aside. Again, not the actions of a guilty betrayer.

He sat there on the floor for a long time, doubt leading to the fear that he’d been wrong, and finally to the realisation that if he was wrong, he’d just hurt the person he loved most in the world. I think he knew then that she wouldn’t have gone far, wouldn’t have left without planning to come back and deal with the situation. He knows that’s not her. He thought about how she’d been struggling, and having admitted the possibility that she might be carrying the Dark One’s child, became afraid for her. He’s afraid of ignorance, of not having all the information he needs to plan and win, and if he was wrong about not being able to father children as the Dark One, what else didn’t he know about the curse? That scared him shitless, and his first instinct when he felt that afraid was to turn to his new wife for comfort. And he’d just driven her away.

I don’t know when he understood the need to apologise. He was still thinking of himself right up to the point where he knocked on Wren’s door. Maybe she knocked some sense into him.