Note: this is just a straight up modern AU, always liked the idea of two friends/penpals falling out of touch and then finding each other years later, so why not make it Outlaw Queen-themed? Hope you like it!

She's cleaning out her attic when she finds the stack of letters from him; they're worn and discolored at the edges, obviously well loved and read through over and over again. The letter on top is the most delicate, dated March 7, 2002. She'd been 17 then, sad and lost and so lonely, fervently seeking comfort in the words on that page. She'd read it on her front porch, the cold rain falling down around her as her fingers stroked the curve of his distinctive "s" and the blunt wall imposed by his "l". She was trying to find him, feel him in each word, each space, the places on that page where his fingers had probably been.

She loved a boy that had kissed her scraped knees at the age of five, and promised he would always protect her. When he was ten, he would always give his cookies at lunch to her because her mother never packed sweets, never allowed them. When he was thirteen, he gave her a kiss, the last kiss, as he stood on her front porch, the moving van behind him, and he promised,promised that he would never forget about her, that he would write to her all the time until they could find each other again.

She loved a boy because he was the only one who ever noticed her, who liked to make her smile, who could make her smile.

She loves him still, even if the letters stopped thirteen years ago, leaving her to wonder if something terrible happened, or if he just moved on, if their connection was only ever meant to be rooted in childhood, whimsical promises and fatuous dreams.

She loves him.

It's silly, so silly, but she decides to take the letters from the box today and reread them over a cup of coffee. It's cold and rainy, and the warmth that reading them will beget settles peace into her heart for a moment.

A week later, after she's packed the letters away again, the phone rings and she picks it up, her stomach knotting as the voice on the other end says one simple word, "Regina?"

It's deeper now than it was, but she knows, she knows.

She loves him still.

"…Robin?"