Hello, and welcome to the story! I had an idea for an OutlawQueen AU. I started writing, and before I knew it, was up to 13,000 words. I felt like sharing, so here is chapter 1. I hope you enjoy my first attempt at an OUAT fic. Of course, I don't claim any ownership over the characters, although all events and characters in this story are modified quite a bit from their original OUAT inspirations to fit into this modern-day AU. Happy reading. - Ana aka. FadedSeptember


"We're here," Regina said, smiling down at her chestnut-haired 10 year old son, who merely answered her with a yawn.

They'd just walked in the early Saturday morning light from the metro station, where they'd made slow but steady progress from their transatlantic flight that had landed at Charles de Gaulle only about an hour and a half prior. She glanced at her phone: it was only 7:30 am, which meant 1:30 am back home in New York. No wonder Henry looked like three sheets in a wind. She dropped the phone back into her cluttered bag filled with half-eaten snacks from the plane, her laptop, phone, Henry's iPad, and assorted pens and billfolds and passport holders.

"You can nap soon," she promised him, as she turned the first key in the exterior door of the tall, narrow old apartment building.

"Here it is. Our new life, Henry. In grandmaman's apartment. Or… ours. Our apartment."

"I hope there's Internet."

"I think we're going to have to wait a few days for that, my dear. Let me go in first."

With a bit of effort, she grabbed the suitcase with more valuable items in it, leaving their others at the bottom of the stairs in the tiny, tile-floor vestibule, hoping that no one would decide to steal the newcomers' suitcases on their first morning in Paris. They'd only been allowed four checked bags (she didn't want to pay for more than two extra bags on the flight over), and those four bags held all of the worldly possessions that they would hopefully need from back home over the next few years.

"Paris is old," Henry observed sleepily as he trailed behind her.

"It is," Regina agreed, her eyes following the quaint antique polished wood banister of the narrow staircase as it twirled its way upstairs. On the main floor, there were two old wood doors on either side of the narrow hall. The building must have two small apartments on each floor.

"We're going up to the third floor," Regina directed as she gritted her teeth and hoisted up the relatively heavy suitcase. She cursed her shoes: they were fine for sitting on a plane for 7 hours, not so great for climbing up stairs. Henry obediently, if not a little sleepily, followed.

It was a small, old stairway, but its marble floors and polished banister made it feel luxurious, Regina thought excitedly to herself, anxious to see what Henry's paternal grandparents' apartment would look like. Her apartment, she corrected in her thoughts. It was hard to imagine she now owned property, and in Paris, of all places. As hard as she'd worked for nearly 10 years, she'd never owned anything other than a few pieces of furniture back in New York.

"Is this it?" Henry asked as they arrived on the third floor.

"3A… this is the one," Regina said, sighing in relief as she set down the suitcase.

She pressed the old-fashioned skeleton key into the keyhole and gently gave it a nudge.

The door pushed open more easily than she expected for an apartment that had sat lonely for years. The wood didn't even stick even though it was a warm, and slightly damp, day in late May.

Inside, it was dark despite the early morning sun, but Regina expected this, as the apartment had been closed for 10 years and of course some blinds or curtains would be drawn. She clutched the keys in her hand as she tentatively walked inside, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark. Henry lingered in the hall, peering in after her. She motioned for him to stay put.

Unfortunately, as her heeled shoes clicked along the charmingly well-worn parquet wood floor, Regina began to have the uneasy sense that something was wrong. Very wrong. She stared dumbly at the keys in her hand for a moment. This couldn't be the wrong apartment, right? her sleep-deprived brain wondered.

No. Of course not. The keys had worked just fine. They were exactly what Henry's grandparents had given her. Henry's grandmother had presented Regina with a crinkled manilla envelope just a few weeks ago. Regina had reached in and pulled out the keys tucked inside, heavy iron things that looked as though they were from another era, filled with the promise of new possibilities, the promise of a different future, for Regina and her son.

This had to be the right place. How silly to think that something felt off.

She glanced around at the small apartment, and even in the darkness and despite her rapidly-beating heart she was impressed with its size. It was relatively small, of course, as most apartments are in old European cities, but Regina and Henry had had a rather small apartment back in New York and this seemed to be a comfortable size in comparison to that. It did smell faintly of dust, but there were other smells lingering, too, and these were the cause for her disquiet. She walked through the main room, its large floor-to-ceiling windows with curtains drawn tightly shut along the far wall.

A half-drunk bottle of red wine sat on a small table, along with a few plates containing crumbs and what appeared to be half a sandwich. It looked reasonably fresh, a sandwich that had been sitting out for no more than a night or so. It had absolutely not been there for ten years, which was, according to Henry's grandmother, the last time she'd visited. Of course, the woman had dutifully recorded for her the name of someone who had looked after the apartment from time to time: Marguerite, who also lived in the building. Perhaps Marguerite had checked in on the apartment recently.

"Hello?" Regina called nervously, her voice cutting through the dark apartment. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a kitchen tucked away immediately to the right of the entrance, a shiny espresso maker sitting on the tiny countertop.

"Henry, stay in the hall," she called back to him, making sure he was still there but not wandering into the apartment after her.

She heard his faint "okay," from the hall.

She began to dig for her phone in her carry-on bag. Damn all the travelling: she couldn't find it in her massive Longchamps bag. If she'd had her normal purse, a delicate Chanel bag, it would already be in her hands.

She continued walking through the apartment, her hand fishing frantically through her bag.

"Hello?" she called again as she stepped through a door, her heart seemingly thudding in her throat. But it was a tiny tiled bathroom. Nothing there except a bath towel, she noticed. Curious.

She returned to the main room. On one side was a door, closed. On the other side, French doors.

"Hello?" she called again, pushing open one of the French doors.

And there, lying in a what appeared to be a pull-out sofa, was a man.

"What!" She half squealed, half-gasped.

The lump of a man moved and groaned.

"Oh, bloody gravy on toast…!" a man, naked except for some rather tight-fitting dark green boxing shorts, sprung up on the bed the second he registered he was no longer alone.

He clicked on a light switch, worse expletives spilling out of his mouth.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, running his hands nervously through his short brown hair.

"I think I should ask you that!" Regina said, backing up instinctively, looking him up and down - where was the damn phone - though there was something distinctly non-threatening about this individual.

"Why are you in my apartment?" Regina asked.

..•..

At any given point in someone's life, one wonders what it might be like to live in Paris. Or any of the great cities in the world, for that matter: New York. London. Rome. Rio. Sydney. Tokyo. So many beautiful city lights, cultures, cuisines… and the fashion. Regina's favorite part.

Regina always wondered what it might be like to live in Paris. After all, she'd studied French in high school, and even did a semester exchange there in her second to last semester at Columbia. It was everything she had hoped it would be: picturesque, a city filled with art and music and history, delicious food and perfect fashion. She polished her French skills and the opportunity to study her favourite fashion designers first hand was unbelievable: during that semester, she spent free time wandering in and out of the great designers' boutiques, as well as haunting the endless fantastic flea markets that were scattered around the metropolis.

She'd also met Daniel in Paris.

He was her age, French. Though, ironically, he had grown up in the United States: his parents had moved to the U.S. from France when he was young. When Regina met him in Paris, he was in France briefly on a trip with some friends, a jaunt around Europe to celebrate their graduation from an MBA program. Regina had met him one night in a smoky bar (Paris still allowed smoking in bars back then) and by the end of the night they were kissing passionately in a tiny alley near the Eiffel Tower.

It had been like a sweeping romance movie. Regina had never felt anything like that, with anyone. Maybe it was the location, the atmosphere, the intoxicating city with its impeccable streets and delicious food and wine and sultry late-summer air that seemed to shimmer between them… but she fell hard. They saw each other every night Daniel was in Paris, and when he left, they parted ways, amicably, haphazardly agreeing to meet again back in the U.S., though both knew that was unlikely.

It had been a whirlwind romance, like a brief, delicious fairy tale…

That is, until Regina returned home at the end of her semester in December, and discovered she was pregnant.

"My life is over before it even began," she recalls sobbing to her friend.

Her parents, her conservative, hardworking parents from Maine, were even more devastated.

Regina graduated from college, pregnant, and gave birth the following spring.

She also reconnected with Daniel, not expecting much, when they were both back in the U.S., he settling in Manhattan where he worked for his father's company. She didn't expect him to care about her - or the baby - after only a short time of knowing each other in Paris. She'd travelled down to Connecticut from Maine, where she was back living with her own family, and met his family. The area was so different than her small hometown in Maine. It was intimidating, in a way: his parents were clearly society types, and Regina was just… Regina. From a humble family who owned a dairy farm in Maine. She liked French fashion and cafe au lait, but that was all the class she knew. She didn't expect anything from him, however; merely wanted to allow her son to have some form of connection with his biological father.

But she and Daniel reconnected.

For the first few months of Henry's life, Daniel was a father to him. Regina and Henry moved into his sun-filled apartment in the upper West Side and she felt herself falling for the man whom she had regarded as little more than a fling in Paris. His parents were kind and accepting of their situation, even though Daniel and Regina were living together before marriage. (Her parents were a different story, but they were in Maine, and so she kept them at arm's length and dodged questions about their cohabitation). Before Henry's first birthday, Regina recalls coming home to Daniel after work, spending time with Henry, cooking dinner together and cleaning up. It was difficult in some ways, the domesticity of it all, the fact that she knew her career wasn't going anywhere she expected to, but at the same time, oddly blissful. They had become a family.

It all changed when Daniel died.

For a few years, Regina stayed in New York. For lack of direction, she applied to the New School and did a master's at Parson's. She knew she was solely responsible for the boy now and needed to have a better career to care for him forever. Those years were a blur, somehow balancing school, freelance work for fashion magazines, and being a mother. But she liked being busy, as it distracted her from the heavy loss of Daniel. Her late nights of studying and running around between her classes and sending Henry to school only managed to further her ambition, which ultimately resulted in a job offer in the fashion industry. She had a career again. She could afford a life of her own, rather than living off of the generosity of Daniel's family.

Even as her career grew and grew in the industry and Regina worked late nights and weekends and every moment she could before and after the time when Henry got home from school and went to bed, she always made time to do one thing at least once every two or three months, and that was to drive to Connecticut. She and Henry spent 2 weeks each summer with Daniel's parents. They exchanged Christmas cards and shared photos over the years, Regina happy to include her son's paternal grandparents from their lives. She supposed… it was all a way for her to maintain her connection with Daniel. In a weird way, she felt close to them when she and Henry were with his parents at his childhood home.

But Daniel's parents were a good ten years older than her own, and Regina noticed, the summer she turned 30, that they were growing older, well into their 70s, having more trouble remembering things, having a hard time keeping up with their nine year old grandson who liked to show them things and wanted them to read stories to him. Regina wondered how many years were left when she and Henry could travel down to see them. She was terrified of the day when she would no longer spend time "with" Daniel, at his home, surrounded by the life he'd once had, as a carefree boy who didn't know he knew he would live such an impossibly short life.

It was the week before her 30th birthday, and Regina and Henry had just spent the week with Daniel's parents. They would be going back to New York that evening. They were sitting down for an early dinner beforehand.

"Thank you again - so much - for bringing Henry to see us. It's so wonderful to see you both. We're so lucky you still want us in your lives," his grandmother, Camille, said.

"Please." Regina said, as all three of them watched Henry chase some sort of insect flying around the emerald green lawn. "We love it here. We're lucky you want us to keep visiting you."

"You are still working for that fashion magazine?"

Regina nodded. "One of their editors."

"You look so tired. You aren't wearing yourself into the ground, are you?" Daniel's mother asked.

Regina sighed. "I don't know. I like my job. But it's long hours. Away from home."

"Are you sure you like it?" Camille questioned.

"It's hard, sometimes…" Regina's voice trailed off. "I wish I had more time to spend with him. I loved my job, at first. But now, I am really in it for the money."

"I thought you liked writing? Or are you tired of it?"

"No, no, not tired. I'm mainly tired of the early morning meetings, the late night events, the pressure and competition that is so present in this industry. It seeps into my work - really effects me, I suppose." Regina replied.

How was it that she could always be so open and honest with Daniel's family, but never her own, never any of her friends or the few other men she'd briefly dated from time to time? They were just so… comfortable to her. She fiddled with the simple ring Daniel had bought for her at a flea market in Paris that she kept on her right hand.

"If you want to try to do something less… taxing, we can help, you know. We'll always help you two," the woman said.

Regina nodded again. This was a conversation she had with Daniel's parents every summer. The truth was that they were wealthy - quite wealthy, they even owned a polo team in Europe - but Regina had always managed to dodge having to take any money from them, minus the generous gifts that they sent Henry for his birthday, which she kept saved in a bank account for when he was older. They used to outright offer her money, but she always refused on a matter of principle. She'd had help from her parents years ago when she really needed it when Henry was first born, but now she didn't.

"We know you don't want our money, but we have something for you," Daniel's mother put quite bluntly as she kept her eyes trained on Henry. "If you want it."

Daniel's father, who had been standing next to a massive column on the front porch of the house near where they were sitting and watching Henry, heard them, and sat down with them at the wrought iron bistro table.

"As you know, we own property in Paris. And we simply cannot take care of it any more. We were going to put it on the market, but then, we realized that you and Henry might appreciate it," Henry's grandmother continued.

"I- I don't think we can go on vacation to France any time soon."

"We were wondering if you would like to go there - for a while," said Henry's grandfather, Julien. "You could relax from your hectic schedule. Find the kind of work you want to do. And if so, we have an apartment that we've owned for decades in Paris that we haven't been to in at least 5-"

"10." corrected his grandmother.

"-10 years." his grandfather finished.

"What do you mean?" Regina asked.

"What we mean, dear, is that you and Henry can have the apartment," Camille said, looking gently into her eyes.

"Oh, no," Regina's eyes dropped to her lap. "I couldn't."

"Yes, you can. This time, accept a gift from us. We want our grandson to know about where some of his roots are… you have tried to teach him French, and he's doing well, but we wonder if you might like to send him to school there for a while. Only if you want, of course. Or can. But we want to provide you with this possibility," said Julien.

"In fact, it's already arranged," Camille said. "We don't want to force you to go if you don't want - but the apartment is now in your name. There is also a bank account, with enough money to pay for utilities for a while, since the cost of living is, obviously, higher…

"I can't." Regina said firmly.

"Think about it," said Julien.

"Just think about it - it's all we ask," echoed Camille. "And if you truly don't want it, that is fine. You may sell it and keep the money as a nest egg for both you and Henry. We want you both to have a good future."

"Why are you doing this?" Regina said, perplexed.

"As we said, we want Henry to be more aware of his roots, from his father's side. But we also believe you - maybe you would like a new start? And…" his grandmother looked over at her husband, and he nodded at her, encouraging her on.

"…because Daniel was going to take you there, the autumn he died. He was going to show it to you - and the apartment would have been yours after you were married."

"After…?" Regina's voice trailed off.

Daniel's father swallowed, clearly fighting back tears. "He was going to propose to you there. He had it all planned - you were to visit Paris that autumn. Your plane tickets, of course, were never used."

Eyes brimming with tears, Regina nodded. That evening, she accepted the gift. She went back to Manhattan and to her hectic urban lifestyle there, but in her mind, she'd already moved out of their generic apartment. Over the next few days, she was fixated - even obsessed - with moving into that apartment in Paris. Maybe, just maybe, it could provide the closure she'd always craved… and give her the fresh start she'd been looking for all of these years.

She couldn't help but feel it was one last gift from Daniel.

..•..

"Your apart-what?" the man was wiggling into a pair of pants that had been lying on the floor. Once he got those on, he popped on a grey t-shirt that had been haphazardly tossed on the nightstand.

Regina's heart was thudding in her chest as she still sifted through her carry on bag, desperately trying to locate her phone. Did 911 work in France?

"Oh," he said, an expression of realization dawning over his face.

Regina simply looked at him, watched as she struggled into his clothes.

"Oh," he said again, a bit more firmly, grabbing at some more clothes that had been haphazardly strewn around the room and stuffing them into a duffle bag.

"I've… I've no right to be here," he stammered, looking down, scooping up things as quickly as possible.

"Precisely. What are you doing here?" She finally got her voice back.

He looked up at her, his grey-blue eyes boring into her. "I'll be honest. I've been squatting for a few months."

"Ah - okay. Really? So, do I call the police?" Regina stammered, quickly growing angry about the situation.

He looked back at her, clearly nervous now. "If you wish, I suppose," he muttered.

"Yeah, I honestly - is it 911 here, or…?" she muttered to herself, finally locating her phone in her bag -it had been wedged in the pages of a book - and pulling it out.

"Not here, no. It's 112, if you're calling from a mobile," the man continued to gather a few things and shoved them into a backpack.

"Are you serious right now?" Regina looked at him, torn between whether she should be running for her life, crying or laughing.

"It would be the appropriate thing to do," he answered somewhat primly.

"Just - how did you get in? Do you know my in-laws?" Regina asked, dumbfounded.

He glanced at her. "I'm friends with Emma. She lives downstairs, and she, or someone in her family, had been given a key about a decade or so ago in case of an emergency. And, well, I don't think she ever really needed it or used it, because she didn't hear from the owners of this flat for years. Finally, well, she knew I had this… situation in my life, where I needed an apartment nearby, fast and cheap, and so she let me use it. Temporarily."

"Temporarily?" Regina questioned.

He nodded. "Ah, yeah, I've only been doing this for, maybe, well, 3 months."

"I didn't know 'temporary' meant 3 months."

"Look, I will pay you, whatever you want. I'll get out of your way." The man rolled up his sleeves and got to work finishing packing, collecting the few things he seemed to have scattered around and stored in the nightstand's drawer, putting them into a suitcase. As he worked, Regina noticed he had a tattoo on his right forearm. She couldn't tell what it was from the angle where she was standing, but the ink was dark, and it was about the size of a tennis ball.

"Yeah, maybe a good idea to just go," Regina said, her nerves subsiding and a strange feeling of anger at the betrayal taking their place. Not betrayal of her, but rather, Henry's grandparents. This incursion into their own property. She crossed her arms as she watched him finish gathering up things, following him out into the main room.

"Right. That's all." the man announced, giving her a nod. He did a quick pass through the rest of the house, taking a few other things with him, tossing the towel from the bathroom over his shoulders and picking up a pair of dress shoes near the door.

Near the door, he pulled out two skeleton keys that were identical to the ones Regina had and held them up for her to see. He looked into her eyes.

"I'll just leave you these," he said. "I'm sorry for the trouble."

He left.