A/N - Gather 'round, gather 'round. Mama's going to tell all a story of why she didn't update for two weeks.

Well, first, I was writing a oneshot that I didn't think would be more than 3,000 words. It turned out to be 13,000 words. I really wanted to publish it before The Touchstone of Ra premiered in the United States; I really couldn't work on anything else while I was writing that long-ass oneshot.

Then, I had to write the next chapter of Don't Be Afraid. Week three of no updates was coming for that one, so I rushed the chapter in like a few days. DBA has been up and running in the HoA archive since October of 2011, so I wasn't just about to leave it. Once Don't Be Afraid was finished, I finally worked on this chapter of Lost & Found. *insert Sebastion gif of 'I hope you appreciate what I go through for you' here*

I know you're going to think, "Julianna, how is this chapter the main climax of the story?" but just be patient; trust me, by the time you reach the end of the chapter, things are going to move so quickly (whether in a positive or negative direction, you'll never know) that it will seem time is just ticking by. I'm scared that we're already halfway through the story; hopefully, since it's summer now and there's no worry over homework or tests, I'll be able to write much faster and there'll be an update either every week or every other week.

I'm also really sorry for continually making these Author Notes so damn long, but Paige said it herself; I cover a lot in my stories, so I also have to make the Author's Notes really long, because I have a lot to say with the chapter to come. Now, I hope you enjoy this two week late chapter, and I hope you have a brilliant day!

Nina
Chapter 13: "The Park"

"Come on, Nina. You and I would be amazing partners!"

"Yeah, well I don't particularly want to be taught by you."

"Why not? Oh, come on, we'd have so much fun. I could teach you all about protons and photosynthesis and the periodic table and goodness, Nina, this could be so much fun if you'd just agree! You're failing Science, you know. Why pay someone to teach you when you have the smartest girl in class at your side right now?"

"You're right, Mara, I am failing Science, but you don't have a two-year-old daughter and eighty-six year old grandmother to look after and make sure they're alive."

Mara had been trying to convince me to let her tutor me for a good few hours now; ever since Eddie spilled the beans and let Mara know I was failing Science, she'd followed me the entire way home and begged me to let her teach me.

It had been a week since Fabian suddenly showed up at my house at four in the morning; a week since Mara had seen her favorite singer. She'd tried to play it down, acting like she didn't care, but I knew she wanted to implode inside. Not to mention that she didn't know very much about Emma's father; I'd always been secretive around her. Now that she knew Emma's father was someone she knew and loved, I didn't think she'd let it go anytime soon.

I held the front door of my house open for Mara to walk in, and once we were both safely inside the house, I closed the door and led her upstairs to my room. I waved to my Gran, who was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper, before shutting the door to my room completely. Mara plopped down on the bed and reached for her books inside her rucksack.

"What I don't understand," Mara began, muttering, "is why, when you knew that Fabian was the father of Emma, you didn't tell everyone?" she questioned, moving her gaze from her sack to my face.

"You have got to be kidding me," I stated, incredulously. "Mara, I've told you this ten billion times, but I'll say it again. No one would believe me if I said I was the father of Fabian Rutter's child. You didn't even believe me at first."

"Okay, okay," she held her hands up in surrender, "but at the time, he was a new singer, and I really, really liked his music. Well . . . I — I kind of thought that you were just looking for attention. Emma was born only a few months ago, and she still didn't have a father. I thought, well, that you were looking for anyone who even looked remotely like the boy you met. I honestly didn't think that Fabian was Emma's father Eddie convinced me; and I still had doubts until he showed up at your house the other day."

"Well, now you know," I murmured, grabbing my books out from the shelf. I sat down next to Mara on my bed, and started to open the book to the page the work was on; but Mara closed the book before I could find the page.

I asked what she was doing, and she announced, "I want to know more about Fabian Rutter."

When I groaned and rolled my eyes, Mara defended, "Hey! He's my favorite singer, and now that my best friend is in direct contact with him, it's the best way to learn about him!"

"I thought you wanted to tutor me today!"

"I do! But I also want to learn about Fabian!" Mara opened my book again and pointed to the paragraph we were ordered to read; as I started to take notes, she asked the first question. "So, what's his favorite color?"

Not even bothering to meet Mara's gaze, I answered, "Orange."

"Hm...how does he feel about being Emma's father?"

I sighed and shut the book closed with a snap. I met Mara's eyes and stated, "Stop it."

"What?" she asked incredulously. "I just want to know about you and him! You're my best friend, and now that I know for sure he's the father of your child . . . well, it's the best way you learn how your relationship is going as parents! Hey . . . where is Emma, anyway?"

"Probably downstairs, with Gran," I guessed. "I'm not that sure. I can go check, though."

As I pushed myself up off of the bed, Mara grabbed my attention by saying "Ooh! Ooh!" when I turned around, my eyebrows raised, she said, "How does Emma feel about having a famous celebrity for a dad?"

Rolling my eyes at Mara, who was the smartest girl in class but couldn't seem to grasp that a two-year-old didn't know smack about her father, I jumped down the stairs and, seeing that Emma was sitting on Gran's lap at the kitchen table, sat down on a chair across from them.

Gran looked up from the newspaper and greeted me. "Hi, honey. How's school? And where's Mara?"

"Upstairs," I announced, taking a biscuit from the basket. "She kept asking me about Fabian, so I just ditched her."

Gran laughed. "Well, honey, at the rate you're going with him, you won't be able to keep the secret from the world much longer. I don't know if you've realized, but Fabian is a famous celebrity. He has fans. I'm not one to understand all this hype about music artists — and frankly, the One Direction fans just scare me — but I know that the media can take something and turn it into something it's not. Nina, if you say, go out in public with Fabian and Emma and someone gets a picture, it can get ugly."

"I know," I admitted, "but I really want to make things work, you know? I grew up without parents . . . I don't want Emma to go through the same thing I did."

Gran placed Emma on the tiled floor, and she wobbled over to me. I grabbed my daughter and placed her on top of my knee, thinking about how every single time that Fabian saw his daughter, he didn't want to hold her or go anywhere near her.

As I didn't know his name the first time I met him, I also didn't know how old he was. I presumed he was somewhere around my age; so another part of why I never tried to contact him back then to tell him he had a daughter was because he was young. He might not do anything to help me at all — I'd seen enough TV sitcoms and read enough articles to know that young men would normally back out on their pregnant girlfriends. I had to tell Fabian about Emma — it was the right thing to do — but I wasn't expecting him to come to my house and beg to start a functioning family.

I was sure that in eleven years, Fabian's fame would die down and there wouldn't be any more screaming fans or interviews or old men following him around with a camera. No one ever remembers things from when they were two, so I was sure that by the time Emma was a teenager, Fabian would be a constant thing in her life and she wouldn't even remember the time when the famous singer/celebrity wasn't around.

"Is Mara still upstairs?" Gran asked, and when I nodded, she continued with: "Well, I'd suggest that you go back up to her before she runs downstairs screaming over something. You know what Mara's like."

I chuckled as I put Emma back on the ground. She ran over to her toy trucks, and I walked back upstairs. I knew what Gran meant; Mara makes something out of nothing. She'd see a dust bunny and run downstairs, screaming her lungs out, saying she heard an axe murderer come through the window. She was way too paranoid about everything. Not to mention the constant weird dreams she'd been having about some girl who kept begging her to help her escape an alternate dimension.

I reached my bedroom, only to see that Mara was busy scribbling notes down with her pen. "Are you ready to tell me more about Fabian now?" she questioned, once I sat down next to her.

"No," I stated simply. "Mara, whatever's happening between me and Fabian is strictly between me and Fabian. I'm a seventeen-year-old single mother of a two-year-old daughter who has a father who's a famous celebrity. My life is very messed up right now and I'm trying to make it work."

"I know," she sighed, "but I'm worried about you. You pretty much summarized your life in one sentence just before. Look, I don't care that you're dating a famous —"

"I'm not dating him!"

"Okay, so you're seeing but not dating Fabian. I don't care that you're doing that. I don't care that he's my favorite singer. I won't ask you for details on everything, I promise; I just want to know how you two have been progressing."

I sighed, thinking about her statement. I wasn't about to leave her question unanswered, but I had no idea how to word our situation. "Well . . . where to start? Fabian explained to you how we met and everything, right?" When Mara nodded, I continued. "Well, we've been talking by email ever since August seventh. And since then, we've just been getting closer and closer.

"I was kind of scared at first, I admit. I don't know what I was thinking when I sent him the photograph. I just wanted him to know he had a daughter . . . and now we're here, right now. It's insane. And . . . I don't know what I'm feeling.

"I'm happy that I'm working things out with Fabian. Then I'm scared, because I don't know what's going to come with us being so close. I'm always anxious, but I'm proud of what we've overcome and how we're progressing, yet I'm questioning about Fabian's motives and what he says. It's an emotional roller coaster. It's really, really hard with Fabian being a popular singer.

"He has interviews, concerts, et cetera, and I'm here, seventeen years old, in my final year of high school. I constantly think that I'm burdening him when I email him and talk to him about my problems, like the history teacher that looks too young to be teaching about something that happened millenia ago or that Patricia and Joy continually think they're the best pair of friends in history and everyone else in unworthy. He's nineteen, he's finished school; he doesn't need to be talking to someone who's two years younger than him.

"But I need him. I do, I need him in my life. He's my rock. I know Eddie's there, but he isn't Emma's father. He doesn't understand that he can't be the one to help me buy Christmas presents for her or send her off to her first day of school. He can be there, but Emma will know that he isn't her father. Jesus Christ, she's two years old and she already calls him 'Uncle Eddie'. She'd have a father figure but her real, biological father will be in the other side of the world, dining in Chinese Buffets while he's on the phone with his friend, not even giving a thought to Nina Martin, that annoying girl who kept complaining to him about problems he doesn't have.

"I grew up without parents. Emma doesn't need to experience the same thing. I put off telling Fabian about his child for two long years, but I needed to take action. Like I said, I didn't actually expect him to take responsibility and fess, completely admitting that the girl in the photograph was his daughter, but he did, and now here we are. He took responsibility. We're trying to make a family, and that's something that people in our school would never understand.

"Our school is another part of it. No one would ever, ever believe me if I said that Fabian was the father of my child. That would basically get the same reaction if I said that Emma's the daughter of Harry Styles.

"I still remember that night in the coffee shop, when I sat down in front of him and said hello, when he was the shy person who didn't think he could ever have a career in music or have any fans, and now here he is, one of the most popular singers of today. People in our school love him, Mara. Take yourself, for instance. You're hesitant to admit it in front of me, but I know how much you admire him.

"If I ever dared to say that Fabian was the father of my child, I'd probably get called out and bullied so severely I'd either have to run away or kill myself. People are so cruel nowadays, and things they're passionate about, like music . . . they don't take those things lightly. I don't have proof, and I was sure that Fabian wouldn't answer me before I sent him the photograph. I didn't have evidence, so no one would believe me. Fabian doesn't understand troubled I am in school, with it being my final year, being a single mother and all.

"He admitted it himself: he wasn't ready to be a father. He spends his days hanging out with his friends and watching television programs. I am so grateful for him, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't understand shit about what I'm going through. He has his problems, and I have mine. I'm so happy that he's in my life and I'm in his, but we need to work out our problems before we take things a step further."

Fabian Rutter: You know what I just noticed?
Nina Martin: Tell all, tell all.
Fabian Rutter: You're from the United States, but you never once told me what state you were from.
Nina Martin: I didn't, did I? Well, I'm from Florida, the land of alligators, extreme summer heat, and DisneyWorld.
Fabian Rutter: I've heard so much about DisneyWorld! I want to go there SO badly!
Nina Martin: I bet you want to go there SO badly, but I bet you don't know the difference between DisneyWorld and DisneyLand . . .
Fabian Rutter: . . . uh, DisneyWorld is in Florida and DisneyLand is in . . . New York?
Nina Martin: Good guess, but no. Try again! (This should be fun . . .)
Fabian Rutter: Why is it called "New" York? Is it new? Is it one of the newer states?
Nina Martin: Don't ask me. There are plenty of "New" states. 1) New York, 2) New Hampshire, 3) New Mexico, 4) New Jersey.
Fabian Rutter: There's a NEW Mexico? What happened to the old one?
Nina Martin: Oh, God, Fabian. It's just a name! Who would have ever thought you could be so funny?
Fabian Rutter: Hahaha. That was so funny I forgot to laugh. Texas?
Nina Martin: Nope!
Fabian Rutter: Carolina?
Nina Martin: Which Carolina are you talking about?
Fabian Rutter: What do you mean, "which Carolina"? ARE YOU SAYING THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE CAROLINA?
Nina Martin: Yes! North Carolina and South Carolina. Which one do you think DisneyLand is in?
Fabian Rutter: Oh, Good Lord. How you lived in the US for only fifteen years of your life and can know all the states is beyond me. Um . . . South Carolina.
Nina Martin: No, it's not there, either!
Fabian Rutter: What other Carolina's are there? And why is there more than one state there?
Nina Martin: Well, there's also North/South Dakota and Virginia/West Virginia.
Fabian Rutter: Ugggh, God, how many states do I have left to choose from?
Nina Martin: 47.
Fabian Rutter: There are FIFTY states? How?! There were only 13 when Britain was in control of you!
Nina Martin: Yes, Fabian, but that was in 1776. We are now 236 years past when Britain was in control of the US. Time has passed and things have changed!
Fabian Rutter: Yeah, well, they don't really give us a lesson in school where we have to name all 50 states of the United States. Gracious, I'll try again. Canada.
Nina Martin: Oh MY GOD FABIAN YOU'RE KILLING ME HERE
Fabian Rutter: What? What did I do?
Nina Martin: Canada isn't a . state, honey. It's a /different country/.
Fabian Rutter: Oh . . . wow . . . okay, I officially give up. What state is it in?
Nina Martin: California.
Fabian Rutter: DAMNIT!
Nina Martin: Fabian, how about I teach you all the states in America in the park? I've been meaning to get out of the house recently, and I'm sure Emma does too, much more to see her father again. How about it?

Fabian agreed, but we'd be doing something much different than a geography lesson.

A few hours later, after Mara had left and we'd gotten ready, Fabian pulled up in the driveway with his car. I waved goodbye to my grandmother, and carrying Emma's small two-year-old body, walked down the pathway to his car. He held the door open for me, which I took gratefully; with a smile, I slid in to the passenger seat.

"How are you?" he asked, pulling the car out of the driveway.

"Good," I shrugged. "You?"

"Eh," he said, circling the steering wheel. "You know. Usual famous-celebrity stuff. Sightings, signings, concerts, stuff like that. Nothing really exciting. Amber has been bugging me to see you again since she can never get in touch with you by email."

"Well, sorry," I apologized, a smile creeping up on my face, "I'm a little too busy emailing you."

He laughed, keeping his eyes on the road as we sped toward the park. I continued to guide him to it, since he didn't know this area very well; I sent him down a dead end once, and he kept referencing my mistake over and over again.

It was strange, the progress we've made. I started out as someone who didn't want to get any closer to him, thinking that if I took one step closer, he would just disappear into thin air. I didn't want to give him my phone number because I'd feel as if we were moving too fast; I didn't want him to think I was trying to make a move on him.

Not to mention how often I thought that he was going to back out of our relationship and fall off the face of the Earth because he didn't want to contact me. But ever since August, we'd been growing closer and closer. Maybe it was the emails. But now I wasn't so closed around him, and I was sure Fabian knew that, because he was definitely taking advantage of it.

"Is this it?" he asked, pulling up to our destination. I nodded feverishly, and Fabian parked the car.

Being the gentleman he is, he ran out and opened the door for me. I smiled and laughed again, taking his hand as he lead me to the park. There wasn't a lot of people here; some parents pushing their toddlers in a swing, some teenage boys playing basketball on a court, and some girls playing tennis on the court to the right.

I gave Emma to Fabian, and in true Fabian fashion, he tried to decline the right to hold his daughter; but I pushed her into his arms and he shut up immediately. She started to play with Fabian's short, messy, dark brown hair, but Fabian didn't seem to care the slightest bit.

We walked further into the park and put Emma on one of those toddler-swings. I was pretty sure that some old ladies, women, and toddler boys wouldn't know who Fabian was, so he didn't need to wear sunglasses or anything to disguise him. I was kind of glad about that fact; I didn't need to walk around with someone I barely recognized, not to mention the fact that Emma was only two and probably wouldn't recognize him in the least because she'd only seen her father two times in the last two months and three weeks.

"This is nice," Fabian praised, his cement-blue eyes scanning the contents of the park. Eddie, Mara, and I, since we all met when we were thirteen, used to come here a lot back in secondary school, when we were studying for tests; but we soon hit our growth spurts and couldn't fit in the slide or was too big for the monkey bars. I'd taken Emma here a few times in the past two years, but never once with Fabian, so it felt nice that I was seeing him again.

I felt like I was going to see him much more often than I was doing lately. Emma would see her father a lot, and I'd see the person who I needed the most right now.

"You know . . ." he mused, looking me in the eye while he pushed his daughter back and forth on the swing, "You said that you kept your American accent through all these years, but you never explained why. Now's the perfect time to explain, while Emma drifts with the wind hitting her face." he persuaded, shaking Emma a bit to wake her up. I'd guessed that Gran hadn't given Emma her daily nap.

I narrowed my eyes, but I wasn't about to leave his question unanswered. "Well, I was only thirteen when I moved here. I did live in the United States for the first thirteen years of my life, so of course I'd speak like they did; but when I moved here, I made best friends with another American and a Brit who barely used her British accent. Mara barely spoke when Eddie and I first befriended her."

"Still haven't answered my question...?"

I released a small laugh. "Sorry. Started to get off track. Well, I was best friends with another American, and we talked much more than Mara and I talked at the time. True, I did go to school in a sea of Brits, but since I was with my American grandmother and American best friend, we kind of kept our accents. I think Mara's kind of losing her British accent, ha."

"And you think Emma will have an American accent?"

"Of course! She's not going to magically pick up a British accent, you know. Well . . . that depends on who she spends the most time with . . . she might have this mix of a British/American accent, considering she has a British dad and an American mom . . . but if you're away on tour . . . or if I'm dead, murdered by fangirls . . ."

Fabian eyed me warily, but he laughed all the same. "You know, I don't think I've ever been in a real park before. At least, not with my friends...and speaking of my friends, would you please email Amber back before she bites my head off? Every time I see her, she says 'How's Nina?' 'How's my BAF?' which she says is an acronym for 'Best American Friend' which is weird considering she's only seen you once and doesn't really know you. And what's ironic is that I, being Fabian, the father of Emma Rutter-Martin — or is it Emma Martin-Rutter? — Emma Rutter? — Emma Martin? — whatever, I'm the father of Emma and the rightful friend of Nina Martin, yet I don't know smack about you."

"Well, there really isn't that much to know," I said, picking Emma up out of the swing, considering the grandmother who was standing next to me was giving me the evil eye. I brought Fabian with me to another side of the park; I let Emma roam around, and him and I sat down on a bench. "Really, there isn't that much to know. I was born and raised in Sebastian, Florida, with my parents, until they died when I was ten. I lived with my grandmother for the next three years, until we moved to Liverpool, because she was offered a job here. I did have to say goodbye to some of my friends — and yes, Fabian, I did have friends back then — so it was kind of sad, but in the first week of my move here, I met Eddie and Mara, and everything seemed to turn out okay. Then I met you in the coffee shop, and, well . . ." I sighed, shrugging my shoulders. "Here we are, in a park, together."

"Aaaaand now I know your complete life story," he said, exaggerating some of the syllables. "Look, I believe everything happens for a reason. Somehow, fate kicked in and we met in each other that night in the summer of 2009, and now we're left with a two-year-old daughter, named Emma Grace Martin-Rutter — or Rutter-Martin — WHATEVER."

I laughed, my chest bobbing up and down. "Hey, you're catching on!" I still wasn't used to Fabian holding my hand, but he grabbed it anyway and we continued talking.

"So, you never gave me that quiz on the United States," he pouted and I laughed.

I didn't even stop to think that he was still holding my hand, much less that he was caressing it. "Okay, you'll have to tell me where the White House is and who the current President is."

"Oh, that's easy!" he announced, and a huge smile formed on his face. "Barack Obama and the White House is in Washington." When I remained silent, Fabian took that as a hint he was wrong. "No? Okay, um, California? New York? Texas? Florida? New Mexico? Old Mexico? Current Mexico? Yeah, I know shit about the United States."

I laughed again and we continued my quiz. I asked him where Mount Rushmore was (he guessed twenty states before he correctly guessed North Dakota); I asked him what states got the most tornadoes (he kept confusing tornadoes with hurricanes and couldn't understand why I kept saying no to states on the east coast); and I asked him about the capitals of the states, and trust me, he got so frustrated because he couldn't get them right that it was actually funny.

I didn't even start to think about the other people that were in the park because Fabian and I were so caught up with ourselves.. I guessed that the girls on the tennis court saw a dark-haired boy sitting on the bench, because one of them came up to us; she couldn't have been older than fifteen, but she tapped Fabian's shoulder and whispered, "Are you Fabian Rutter?"

He released a weak laugh and nodded. The girl's eyes grew to the size of watermelons and she started breathing heavily. She met the eyes of someone behind me and Fabian, who I presumed were the other girls on the tennis court; Fabian stood up, letting go of my hand, and addressed the small girl.

"Would you like anything?" he asked, and I smiled with pride. To know I was the reason why he wasn't the shy boy he was back then was something I would never get over. You can make a difference in someone's life. "An autograph, a photo?"

The girl still didn't respond. She signaled her friends over from the tennis court, and they all joined us. They all started talking at once; I couldn't decipher a lot of them, since all of them were wearing the same outfit; but more people came — an adult, the grandmother and grandfather, and even one of the teenage boys from the basketball court. They formed a circle around Fabian and I, and I couldn't see the other side of the park. I couldn't see my daughter — Fabian and I were swarmed with fans — and I was sure that I would get bitten in the butt for this later.

A/N: Climax REACHED! Things are going to take a turn for the worst, so buckle your seat belts because I'm not kidding when I say that things are going to accelerate so fast.

One thing that I noticed during my two-week absence was that I have impatient readers. I actually got two messages on my tumblr account (if you have a FanFiction account, those two anons who asked, don't be afraid to show your face! I want to hug you!) saying that they were dying for an update! Don't worry, though; chapter 14 is currently in the works so I can guarantee an update next week.

Next Update: July 5th, 2013; "The Denial". Try to figure that one out!

I do hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you have a sparkling day!
~Julianna