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"I don't understand, though. Why did they have to die?"
Hornet suspects the question isn't rhetorical, but she still keeps her silence. Lace is already fully aware of the answer; that isn't why she asks the question.
There are an infinite number of things she could say. They were dying anyway, it was kinder, for once in their existence they wanted to control their fate even the slightest amount. An infinite number of rebuttals Lace could snap back. We could have repaired them, it would have been even kinder for them to be free, do you really think that if they had any control they would have chosen to die there?
The fact that the answer is yes brings no comfort to anyone. Nor do the dregs of silk that the two of them stand among in the Exhaust Organ, those few final greyed remains that Hornet didn't claim for herself. But Lace still kneels in the soot-encrusted floor and dutifully picks out the threads, sweeping them up so carefully.
"They were so close to being free," she mutters.
Free to be eaten by the Void, if Hornet's being uncharitable. With their old and frayed body and without the loving protection of their mother, whose heart had only ever had room for Lace, they wouldn't have lasted long locked away down there. Certainly not long enough for the Abyss to recede without being hollowed out and left to a far more agonizing demise.
But even granting the grace of their survival, Hornet listened carefully to every story Lace told on the journey over. Even if she hadn't dueled them to the death, even if the Void hadn't chewed through them, even if they were finally relieved of their duties to go wander... Even in Lace's happiest stories, the thing they had always feared the most was the slow decline. Dying gradually as their body failed them, persisting in their existence because someone else wanted them to, fading, fading, fading.
The Phantom had already lived a long enough existence at their post. If it had not been Hornet's needle, it would have been another's blade. They would have found nail after pin after claw to throw themself against until finally they were felled. Telling herself this makes Hornet feel no less guilty--but she bears far larger burdens on her shoulders regarding Pharloom alone.
In her musings, she's left Lace to gently comb out the weft of silk that she managed to gather, humming a tune she doesn't recognize. Maybe someday she'll elect to teach Hornet this song, or perhaps she won't; for the moment it remains a treasured secret between siblings. Still, when Lace's hum breaks on a sob, she steps forward to place a gentle hand on her shoulder. Lace jerks and stiffens, and sobs again before abruptly straightening out of her kneel.
"Well, enough of that," she says briskly. "We've got other things to do before we go. If they were incompetent enough to die against you, that's their own problem."
Her voice wobbles unconvincingly on that last proclamation, though she glares as though challenging Hornet to acknowledge it.
But she simply nods, and steps for the exit. "We should go to Fleatopia next. I believe you would enjoy it."
"Fleatopia? Sounds like a bunch of wimps. But if you insist."
Lace does not linger at the doorway to the Exhaust Organ as she leaves for the last time, her sibling's silk clenched tightly in her hand.