A/N: Trigger warning for mentions of infertility and child loss.

The Thing About Making Amends

The thing about making amends was it took a lot of guts. Swallowing pride. Admitting fault. All things Kase lacked on a good day, and these days were nothing but bad.

No one had forced him out of France, not yet, even despite the Queen's decree. Air travel was restricted until the investigation of the Notre Dame fire was completed. Some of the public believed that terrorism could have been the cause, a direct attack on one of France's most iconic cultural monuments. Kase didn't believe that though. The most likely culprit was time.

Time, which could give and take in equal measure, and now Kase was stuck with a plethora of it. Too much time to think about how he wanted to make amends, how he wanted to be better, how he wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to his family ever again.

Kase found Neelam in the garage surrounded by three Doberman puppies, their ears pointed but tails long. The pups played on the ground while Neelam threw treats out at them from the back of a convertible. He had no idea where the dogs had come from or where Neelam would have found the time to collect them in the week since he'd spoken to her last, but somehow he wasn't surprised. He'd found her in stranger situations, after all.

Kase let out a long whistle. "That's one hell of a car."

Beautiful wasn't enough to describe the classic corvette sitting in front of him. This car was a wet dream: Top down. Creamy leather exterior. Cherry red paint, glossy and fresh, with white racing stripes. The engine had to have been swapped out for something with a little more oomph. Not at all the kind of ride the Queen of France would be sporting.

"Belonged to my grandmother." Neelam ran her hand over the dash like she would pet one of her precious puppies. "Mom found her in a shed back home. She never liked cars; they weren't her thing. But the moment I saw her rusted-out rims I knew…she was mine."

The corvette was fully-restored now. No more rusted-out rims. But it still sat in a garage in a different country, unmoving.

"She have a name?"

"Gen calls her 'expensive hunk of junk,'" Neelam joked to herself as she got out of the car, shutting the driver side door with her hip. "I am partial to Cherry or Big Red. But I'm willing to workshop a few other ideas."

"That was terrible, Oh my God."

The puppy at her heels started yapping, it's own version of laughter. Neelam scooped the pup up, small enough that she only needed one hand though she used both, its ears flopping over its eyes as she raised it to her face and let its gleeful pink tongue lap at her cheeks. The other two, jealous of the attention, pawed at Neelam's legs, desperate for their own love.

Kase couldn't resist. He had to cuddle the damn things.

The puppy Kase scooped up was the closest, but also the least cuddly. While Neelam got licks and loving, Kase got tiny growls and sharp puppy teeth to the hand. He almost dropped the pup because of the pain, but soon enough it calmed down and accepted its fate, sniffing at Kase with mild curiosity.

"That's Madhubala," Neelam said, scratching the puppy under its chin, tail thumping on Kase's arm. "She seems to like you. She won't even let Gen hold her."

"Really?"

"Mmmhmm, Gen takes it very personally."

"Who've you got?"

"Bathilda, my sweet angel," Neelam cooed, and the pup in her arms squirmed with joy. "That dumb fuck on the ground is Gerald."

Gerald was busy lying on his back, kicking around in circles, tongue lolled out on the concrete, happy as a clam.

They watched the dogs play for a bit, happy to sit back and let themselves be distracted by all the jumping, licking, and biting. Madhubala really was a bitch, Kase concluded, as he watched her pull at the ears of her siblings. Gerald took it better than Bathilda, but more than once Neelam had to intervene between the two girls and pull them off each other. She didn't seem too worried, assuring Kase that they would grow out of such a rivalry when they finally realized there was no reason for jealousy.

When the pups tired themselves out and fell asleep in a pile, Kase was left with Neelam in the silence. She busied herself making sure the pups had food and water, that there was nothing left out that could crush them or hurt their paws. She would be a good mother, Kase thought off-handedly. She was certainly diligent enough in her care. Just like she had always cared for him, giving him a place to stay, a home. All he did was repay her kindness with disrespect and pain.

Guilt ate a whole in his chest.

"Listen…Neels…I'm sorry. I fucked up, and I can't take it back. I'm just…yeah. I'm sorry."

Neelam let out a long sigh, her whole body deflating with it. She stared at him a moment, no judgement nor malice. Then, she beckoned him over her shoulder.

"Walk with me."

He followed her out of the garage and back into the main drag of the palace. Butlers swooped in after them, closing up the shop and collecting the puppies so animal control didn't come knocking. Neelam paid them no mind, pulling Kase along. They headed towards his room, he realized, as the stairs curved towards a familiar hallway.

The room was bare bones now. Nothing but the classic, antique furniture and portraits of dead monarchs left. There was nothing to be done about the scuffs on the floor from his tripod nor the holes in the walls from multiple thumb tacks, but that was why they paid people. The restoration committee would come by sometime next week, and then it would be like Kase had never lived there at all.

Well, almost.

"Looks like you left a few things," Neelam commented, pointing to a few polaroids left hanging, a couple picture frames left full.

"Yeah, well, I wanted to leave you something to remember me by, seeing as though I won't be coming back."

Neelam wandered over to the desk and picked up the nearest frame. It held a black and white photo from a few years back: Gen placing a kiss to Neelam's cheek while Kase cheesed half-drunk in the background. Everyone's clothes were one. This photo was not taken as a prank for the Insta page, nor as a way to shock the nation. It was just a nice memory.

"Give Gen time. You know she can react impulsively," Neelam said as she placed the photo down and moved onto the next.

"I don't know. It's different this time."

"Love makes you do stupid things."

She could have been talking about Gen, about how her love for Kase was what caused such a violent reaction to his fuck up. But Neelam was looking at a picture of Brayden, one of the few he still had from so, so long ago. How young he looked in that photo, barely a scratch above puberty, cheesing like a fool with a much less surgically-modified Brayden on his arm. They looked happy.

What was that like?

"I don't love Brayden."

"But you love your sister and you love Alexandrina. In some way I know you were just trying to protect them both."

"Protect Drina, yeah right," Kase scoffed, kicked at the ground. "All I can manage to do is hurt her. No wonder she dumped me."

"You were trying to protect her from yourself. Your love is explosive, Kasey. Always has been."

Everything about him was. Explosive. That was all he knew how to be, all he could do when everything in the world was just so...much.

"I…I wanted to marry her. I had the ring picked out and everything." Kase hadn't spoken that out loud to anyone. "Not even Mom and Dad knew, but I carried that ring around for weeks, let it burn a hole in my pocket. Every time I reached down and touched it, it reminded me of what I wanted…what I was too scared to want. I wanted Drina, sure. I still want her. But then I would punch a wall, or I would have a panic attack, or Dad would lecture me on the importance of duty, or marrying into New Asia, and I just…"

"Marriage is hard," Neelam said. Her voice was even, gave nothing away, but her eyes were distant, like she was reliving something unpleasant. "There was a time, not too long ago, that Gen and I thought about getting a divorce."

Kase's jaw physically dropped. Anyone who knew Gen and Neelam knew about their fairytale love story, knew how hard they fought just to make their love legitimate, knew how hard and how passionate they loved each other still. It was impossible to reconcile that love with divorce. All the inside jokes, the smiles over dinner tables, date nights and joint charities and little presents everywhere...Kase couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it.

"I wanted kids. I still do. Gen doesn't. Or, at least she's fine without them. If it were up to her she'd pass the crown to Marinette and call it a day. But I've always wanted a child to call my own, full of the best parts of Gen and I. So I convinced her." Neelam crossed her arms over her chest, like she was holding herself. Normally this was when Kase would give her a hug, tell her it would all be okay, but he had lost the right to touch. All he could do was listen. "The first cycle of IVF didn't take, but that's to be expected. I was upset but not devastated. But then the second cycle failed, then the third. This fourth cycle…it's not looking great either. My mom had trouble getting pregnant with me, and those kinds of things are genetic. So this grand idea of a baby kept shrinking and shrinking."

"I was terrible to her. Really, I was...I was awful, the bitchiest version of myself, and the hormones the doctors had me take just made it worse. There were whole weeks where we wouldn't talk. I couldn't even look at her without bursting into tears. I felt like a failure. And Gen thought she didn't make me happy anymore. She suggested that we would be happier apart, and I agreed."

"And were you?"

"Dieu, no! We lasted two days before I crawled back into our bed and begged for forgiveness," Neelam scoffed. There was a bit of a laugh in there, but Kase didn't think now was the time to laugh along. "Why do you think I have so many dogs? I'd been asking for a while, and Gen finally caved after the ballet. If I can't have children of my own, at least I can have my fur babies."

"Neelam…I don't know what to say." What could he possibly say to make this better? To change things for someone he loved more than his own life? "I'm so sorry."

"The women in your life keep leaving you," Neelam said, blunt as ever. Hell of a non-sequitur. Kase felt like he'd been slapped with other the change in conversation.

Neelam held out her hand and started counting fingers.

"Your sister is dying. She is going to die. The whole country knows she is going to die. And that timer has been ticking down ever since your birthday ten years ago."

Another finger.

"Fast forward to nineteen. Your first serious girlfriend left you. She manipulated you, and then she made you believe that you were the one responsible for breaking up your sister's marriage. And when Elodie found out, instead of standing with you and believing you, she abandoned you as well."

Another two fingers.

"And finally you get Alexandrina. She was a good presence in your life. Grounding, sweet, genuine. And you pushed her away, because you were trying to get ahead of the curve this time. Because if you pushed her away first, then at least the hurt you felt, you could control."

Kase felt uncomfortably exposed, like he had been stripped bare and left to be judged by Neelam's unforgiving eyes. He'd heard these things before, of course, by therapists and counselors all claiming they could fix him. It hit differently coming from someone he loved, someone he trusted above all others. The words carried more weight, burrowed homes inside his heart and made it ache. Waves of grief came from nowhere, made tears smart in his eyes. But never once did he feel anger.

Neelam didn't move to hug him, didn't try to comfort him. She let him ride out the wave, let him feel a small part of the things he should have felt years ago.

"You have so many feelings, and you turn them into violence," she said, staring at the photos on the wall. "Why not try turning them into something beautiful instead?"

The photo she stared at now was his most recent: Notre Dame on fire. The spires had just caught, billowing smoke, orange flickers visible even through the grain. While it was hard to look at, that wasn't the focus of the photo. No, the focus was Gen captured from below, her eyes focused on the crowd ahead, focused and full of collective mourning. Her mouth was open, in the middle of her internationally-trending "We Are Paris" speech. Kase had woken up to multiple news outlets in his DMs asking to use that photo, with the proper credit of course. He hadn't replied to any of them yet. He hadn't even called his mother. Over the course of a night, his world and France's had changed, and all he wanted to do was bury his head in the sand until it faded away.

"What's beautiful about a building burning? All that art, all that history, gone."

"True, we can never get back what we lost today." Neelam said, gently pulling at the edge of the photograph. She held it to the light, head cocked in thought. "But something isn't beautiful because it lasts. Something is beautiful because it makes you feel. And this, Kasey…this is a feeling."

She pressed the photo into his hand. For the first time since the ballet, her smile was genuine.

The thing was, feelings were scary. They were messy and complicated and tied knots around his stomach until it felt like his insides were working their way out. They clogged his throat and burned his eyes and made it impossible to speak. Feelings were nothing but a hassle. Feelings - like the ones in his photo - were sadness and pain.

But feelings were also happiness (he and Drina in the snow, making snow angels while fat flakes fell into their hair). Feelings were home (Delia, Auden, and Hayden piled atop of him, hair messy and fingers smeared with pizza grease, far from perfect). Feelings were love (Gen and Neelam's first dance, lost in their own little world; Mom and Dad's anniversary dinner, their eyes locked on each other; Drina with a butterfly on her finger, Drina as she stood atop the Eiffel Tower, Drina as she bit down on a powdered donut with sugar on her nose, Drina, Drina, Drina).

Kase knew what he had to do now. Where he had to go.

"Neelam?" She was half way out the room now but turned her head back towards him, and he smiled a small smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"And for what it's worth, I really am sorry."

Someday he'd get her to smile at him without sadness. "I know you are, Kasey."

It wasn't forgiveness, but it was a start.

There was something else Kase had to do before he cut ties with this life, something not quite as big but just as important. He pulled out his phone and scrolled to his Instagraph. For years, two profiles logged themselves under his account: his professional palace-approved page and the one he used to shock the world.

His finger hovered over the red trashcan. Once he deleted the profile, he could never go back. Most of those photos didn't have copies. But did he really want them?

For years he'd used those photos to scandalize, to traumatize, to push people who may come to care about him away. If his life was a complicated mess that had everyone guessing, then no one would bother to untangle it. No one would hurt him, because one photo put him in the position to do the hurting. It was self defense. Self-sabotage.

Kase needed to be better. He wanted to be better. For Gen. For Neelam. For Drina.

One deep breath in and he pressed delete, leaving kinky_photog and Paris in the past.