In case you were wondering about the title, I thought I would show my appreciation for one of my favorite authors, Following My Own Footsteps. She's the one who inspired me to write dramatic Maltara fluff. If you haven't read her stories, you must; they're exceptional. So, Barbara (yes, I got your name from your profile), thank you for being such a good writer.

Not to worry though, you'll all get your special shoutout. Every one of you writers and reviewers has inspired me or made me smile in some way. So, congratulations guys. Here's a one-shot as a gift; you make my day.

So what if she didn't like handcuffing people and serving justice? Who cares if she didn't have an interest in criminal justice and terminology? Why did it matter if she wanted to follow a different path for her future?

Her father kept trying to ask himself those questions. He didn't want to let the whole entire matter get to him. She was her own person and could do whatever she wanted. She didn't have to follow her parents' footsteps, even though it may have helped her in the future.

Juliana had never been the smartest girl in her class. Her mother, a beautiful, yet serious and intelligent profiler with the FBI, had always given her books to read and math work to do. And she had always tried to do them. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never think straight or solve a single division problem.

And then Juliana learned what the word 'stupid' meant. She would go around the house, calling herself that when she didn't get a single math problem correct on a worksheet, which happened quite often. She knew she was the dumbest girl in her class; the one who got the lowest reading and math scores on standardized tests. The one who got picked on at recess because of her intelligence level. The one who would never be able to be as smart as Mommy; or Daddy, for that matter.

"Juliana," Natara, her mother, would say. "Please, you have to keep trying with your math work. You'll get better...I promise."

But that never happened. In fact, it seemed as if the opposite happened. There were days that Juliana came home from school in tears; she'd been repeatedly picked on and humiliated by her seemingly brilliant classmates. Ms. Finnick, her teacher, tried to help her obtain valuable classroom knowledge by taking a slow and gentle approach, but no matter how hard Juliana worked, she could never remember the capital of Wyoming or the product of twelve and six.

There were nights that Natara and Mal, Juliana's father, would put their daughter down to bed, but she would wake up an hour later from nightmares that her classmates were making fun of her and jeering at her spelling errors.

Both Mal and Natara were often discouraged by their daughter's performance. They didn't know what was wrong with her. As a toddler, she learned to sit, walk, and speak quickly, but as soon as she began to learn academically, the brightness she showed earlier on did not show. It had been obscured by the shadow of an unknown cause. Why wouldn't she learn well? She tried so hard and was extremely motivated. Her parents were intelligent themselves. So what was the matter?

While Mal and Natara would worry about it on restless nights, Juliana would lie in her bed across the hall, humming soothing tunes to herself in bed. She learned 'Hey Jude' and "All You Need is Love' from listening to her mother's old CDs.

Pretty soon, the humming turned to singing. The words flowed through Juliana's mind and were released in her sweet, calm voice in the dim light of her bedroom at nighttime. She even begged Mal and Natara to get her a small radio for Christmas. And while her parents sorted through their work at the San Francisco Police Department, Juliana lulled herself to sleep while listening to sweet tunes on the radio.

The soft, quiet singing turned into tunes that Juliana projected with her voice all day, throughout the apartment and at school. At breakfast, she would sing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' between mouthfuls of Frosted Flakes cereal. Lunchtime was spent with her listening to her small iPod nano, only pausing to take bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sips of her juice. Mal and Natara would listen to Juliana sing a different song every day at dinner. They never missed a chance to hear her carry a tune as she went about her daily activities. She had the type of voice that soothed a listener, yet sent chills running down their spine from hearing the pure perfection of her notes.

Pretty soon, Juliana began to discard the word 'stupid' from her vocabulary, unless it was used to describe a note that she could not reach in a song she was learning to sing.

Natara was absolutely overjoyed with the entire idea of Juliana carrying her emotions through tunes, but Mal hesitated for a moment before sharing her pride. He looked into his daughter's big, pool-blue eyes as she sang. He had blue eyes himself, but not that mysterious shade.

Because Juliana's color eyes belonged to his father, Jacob.

Mal didn't like to think about the fact that his father was on the loose from a crime he committed several years ago, pertaining to drugs and murder. In fact, whenever he looked into Juliana's eyes, the thought of the whole Fallon generation being cops and detectives, with the exception of his sister, Cynthia, came to Mal's mind. Cynthia's daughters didn't join law enforcement when they grew up. Raven became a kindergarten teacher and Denni worked as a hairstylist and part time yoga teacher. Juliana was the only hope of the existing Fallon generation to continue the occupation of a detective or cop. For a moment, Mal began to drift his thoughts to coaxing Jules into being excited about law enforcement.

"But she's not interested in that," Natara reminded him. "It'll be a tough try to get her to earn a police badge."

And she was right. She always was.

"I know," Mal said. "It's just...I don't know. It's gonna feel weird if I don't have a kid that's a cop or something."

"Well," Natara reassured him with a smile. "We always have another chance."

Mal knew those hints from prior experience. Instinctively, he placed his hand on her still-flat stomach. It wouldn't stay that way for long, however. "Natara, you're pregnant, aren't you?" He couldn't stop a grin that teased at his lips.

She was. And no one was more excited about the new baby than Juliana.

"A little brother or sister!" she would happily exclaim. "Now I can sing lullabies to somebody at night to put them to sleep!"

And for awhile, everything was perfect. A very healthy Nathan Malachi Fallon was born seven months later, and as promised, Juliana sang her brother a lullaby each night. Her sweet, soothing, yet melancholic and flowing voice put him to sleep every time.

And twenty years later, Natara would look at old photo albums of Juliana, Nathan, and Rose, a baby girl that came into the world two years after Nathan was born. There were pictures where eleven year-old Juliana would be on her knees, singing three-year old Nathan and baby Rose a song. You could tell she was singing because her lips were formed into a perfect shape and her eyes were full of glee that she only wore when she was carrying her voice through music.

But photographs weren't the only thing Natara looked at of her daughter. She would turn on the television and see her daughter all the time, being interviewed and receiving numerous awards for her work. She was thirty-one years old and rarely suffered from dyscalculia and dysgraphia anymore, compared to when she had heavy symptoms as a child, disabling her from learning efficiently.

"Juliana Angela Fallon," television interviewer Jara Michaels, a very famous show host, would say live on television. "That's a pretty name. How'd you get it?"

Juliana would simply smile and give a tiny shrug. Natara had the same habit of doing so when someone asked her a friendly, personal question. "My mother picked out the name Juliana and Angela was my father's mother's name."

"That's a breathtaking gown, Miss Fallon," Jara referred to Juliana's interview outfit, a blue frock with matching heels. "Where'd you get it?"

Natara knew the answer to this question as Jules answered it proudly. "My mom made it for me. It arrived at my penthouse last week."

Jara nodded in observance. "Really?" she smiled. "Quite a gifted mother you have there. Mine can't sew to save her life." The audience let out breezy laughs.

Juliana let out a small blush. "Well, she is very talented," she informed the crowd. "She's an FBI agent for the San Francisco Police Department."

Surprised looks came from the audience, as Jara wore one herself. "Really? San Francisco, huh? I sure hope a crew of paparazzi don't come to hunt her down for an interview," she joked.

Natara couldn't stop a smile. She knew they wouldn't because they didn't know where she and the rest of the family lived. Nathan was finishing college and Rose was just beginning at Princeton University. Juliana lived with her husband and two daughters, Sami and Naomi in New York City, where she performed songs and sang her heart out. She had even been chosen to sing the national anthem in the Super Bowl, which was a tremendous honor.

And Mal, who, twenty years ago, was unsure of his daughter's career path, couldn't be more pleased with her work. Whenever he saw her in concert, she wore the same overjoyed look on her face that she had while singing. His baby girl. The one who broke the charts with her new singles. The one who married a violinist. The one who had dyscalculia and dysgraphia as a child; giving her an extremely hard time with schoolwork.

She was the one who chose to follow her own footsteps.

And Mal could not have been more proud.

Hope you all enjoyed that. I'm working on a fluffier fanfic right now, actually. I'm going to my Grandma's later, so I'm going to use the documents app that I have to write it. In the meantime, please review this! I literally fall out of my bed screaming with joy when I see review updates. So, I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty loose with my emotions. Lol, "apoemfromtheheart", you're not the only one! Hee.