Aster's office smelled of old paper, beeswax, and the faint metallic tang of Odin's servers humming behind the walnut panels.
Late-morning light slanted through the tall windows, catching dust motes that drifted like slow thoughts. The fire in the stone hearth had burned down to embers.
Ami sat cross-legged in the deep leather armchair opposite Aster's desk, barefoot, still wearing the oversized hoodie Mia had fallen asleep in. Her posture was loose, almost lazy. But her eyes—sharp, amused, calculating—never left Aster's face.
She had been in the driver's seat since the knife incident. Four hours now. A record.
Aster leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. His voice was quiet, the way it always was when he spoke to the system instead of to any single alter.
"Ami. You've done well. You kept her safe this morning. But the body needs rest. Real rest. Not this… sustained performance."
Ami tilted her head, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. The smile was quicksilver—there and gone, impossible to pin down.
"Performance?" She laughed once, soft, almost affectionate. "That's cute, Aster. You still think this is a stage."
She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. The movement was fluid, theatrical, but the eyes stayed serious.
"No one else is better suited right now. Carmilla would mother her into paralysis. Mircalla would try to run us straight back to Triple E before lunch. Lilith…" Ami's smile sharpened. "Lilith would burn the whole mountain down just to feel the heat. And Baby? Baby can't even look at a knife without folding. Me? I keep things moving. I keep things *light*. Light enough that the cracks don't show. That's my job."
Aster studied her. Not with judgment. With the calm, patient weight of someone who had read every page of every file Triple E had ever written on systems like this.
"You're holding the reins because you're afraid the others will drop them," he said gently.
Ami's grin widened, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"Afraid? Nah. Strategic. There's a difference." She tapped two fingers against her temple. "I've got the playlist going in the background, the playlist *I* built. Acid-tech, dark, fast. It keeps the nervous system from flatlining. Keeps Mia from sinking back into that white-room static. You want calm? Calm is what got us carved up and sold by the millions. I'm giving her *alive*."
She paused. The trickster mask slipped for half a second—just long enough for something raw and protective to flash underneath.
"I'm not letting go until I'm sure the rest of us won't drag her back into the machine."
Aster exhaled slowly. He didn't argue. He never did when an alter was this anchored. Instead he reached for the small ceramic teapot on the side table, poured a cup of steaming chamomile, and slid it across the desk toward her.
"Then at least let the body drink something that isn't caffeine and adrenaline," he said.
Ami looked at the cup. Then at him.
She took it.
Her fingers—long, elegant, the same fingers that had once signed ten thousand glossy photos with perfect loops—wrapped around the warm ceramic like it was something precious and slightly ridiculous.
"Fine," she said, voice lighter again, back in character. "But if Carmilla tries to switch in and start knitting or whatever the fuck caregivers do, I'm spiking the next pot with Red Bull."
Aster's mouth twitched—the closest he ever came to a laugh.
Ami lifted the cup, took a slow sip, and let the steam curl around her face.
For a moment the office was quiet except for the low crackle of the dying fire and the distant, muffled sound of Atlas barking once outside.
The trickster was still driving.
But the trickster was also, for the first time, letting the body feel something as simple as warm tea.
And that, Aster knew, was already a kind of surrender.