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He'd never really thought about it, though perhaps in retrospect he should have considered what dying felt like. The Eldest of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood was intimately familiar with the way death coated others in its cold, eternal shroud. That part came as easy as breathing; the mechanical and thoughtless snuffing of light of those damned, like he was, so it fit —in a weird, ironic way like in his brother's favorite novels —that it was a puppet who did him in this time. A human devil killed by the Devil's Puppet. Funny.
"No. No, no no! Big Bro, hang in there!"
The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was the puppet sheathing its sword. Good. Only he would pay the price for the Brotherhood's transgressions against man, against Krat, and against God itself. His siblings, his three supportive pillars in life and now in death, helped him up, and then he floated and the world slipped away.
When he came to, an overhead light burned into his retinas through his closed eyelids, and had him half-convinced he'd somehow won the cosmic lottery, because surely Hell wasn't this comfortable and bright. The youngest's soft hands slotted into his, and he knew he was somewhere even better than Heaven: he was home. He tried to move his fingers, give her hands a reassuring squeeze, but his body refused to obey. He couldn't move at all, swallowed up by his own bedsheets —what was initially a comfort now weighed on him and something almost like panic bubbled up beneath his ribs with each ragged breath.
"He's dying," said Battle Maniac. He did always have a way of cutting straight to the truth of things.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Look, I'm not happy about it, either, but we gotta face the facts, and the fact of the matter is he's gonna die if we don't do something real crazy real fast."
"But…maybe he'll pull through? He's Big Brother. He always does…" Her hand tightened in his, and a spattering of tears dropped onto his bare knuckles.
"Oh now you've done it. You made her cry," said Eccentric.
Trapped in his unmoving body as he was, Eldest did not see, but heard the meaty slap of flesh against the wooden walls of their hideout. Battle Maniac cursed, probably nursing his now-bruised fist. His voice quivered with suppressed rage in between heaving, hissed breaths. "And what about me, eh? You think I don't wanna cry? For fuck's sake, little brother. You know it, too. There's only one thing we can do, now."
Silence descended, and the call of oblivion beckoned him once more, but then his youngest brother grasped his other hand, pulling to hold it against his forehead.
"I know," said Eccentric like a prayer.
Youngest cried, and the Eldest died.