Slurpeez wrote: I don’t think Rumple is dying at present so much as losing his humanity.
Perhaps those aren’t mutually exclusive, though. Losing your humanity can equate to dying in a world where hearts can literally be affected by the choices we make. If his heart is getting progressively darker/smaller/more corrupt that would have physical consequences on the rest of the body, not just the “soul.”
Perhaps, since as Rumple said, magic works differently here. Rumple isn’t impish green in appearance in SB, so maybe he’s not immortal here either? It’s never been made clear exactly why but chalk it up to hand-wavy, rule-bendy obfuscation I suppose. Lack of transparency and lack of consistency about rules never seemed to bother the writers, so why let it begin now? Despite his curse, Rumple was mortal again in A Land Without Magic in S2 when he went to NYC, so perhaps his growing darkness again negatively impacted him on his most recent stay in NYC. Banishment from town was tantamount to a death sentence, because not even re-entry into SB was enough to stay the course once Rumple ventured outside of the town limit to where there was no magic to keep his darkening heart from killing him. I suppose this could be comparable to Rumple being poisoned by Hook, but not even re-entering SB was enough to stop the posion from nearly killing Rumple; only Snow trading Cora’s life for Rumple’s was enough to save him that time. Now the only way to save Rumple may be to find another candle or to drive the darkness which plagues him into an innocent host (i.e. Emma, or baby Snowflake, for that matter).
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy