A/N - Wow, my first AU Anubis fic! I've never written one of them before, so I'm definitely excited to write this one. If you're wondering, I originally had this idea as a 1D fanfic, but because I don't like writing about real people, I changed it around a bit and now it's an Anubis fic! Some notes that might be useful to know: Flashbacks will be in italics, and will be centered, so you can pick it out easily.
I do hope you enjoy this chapter, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Have a sparkling day!~*
~Julianna

Fabian
Chapter 1: "The Photograph"
Three years after the one-night stand - August 7th, 2012

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Mick, Jerome, and I were watching television programs. I'd only known the two for a year and a half, but we'd reached the point in our relationship when one could come into the others house without knocking and the other wouldn't care.

Mick had done exactly that: he'd walked in without knocking only ten minutes ago, and despite my protests, turned off the channel I was watching and turned it to the sports channel to watch his usual football game.

"Ah, Mick, can't you watch it at someone's else house?" I complained as I threw my book down on the leather couch. He flashed me grin before grabbing the remote from underneath the table and sitting down next to Jerome and I on the couch.

"Nah - Liz is hogging the television at my place, so I figured I'd just come here," Mick laughed as he sat forward, watching the sports game more intently. I rolled my eyes; Liz was Mick's younger sister. I knew that Mick could obliterate the scrawny teenage girl in a heartbeat, but he loved her too much to do that.

I rolled my eyes, leaning back into the couch. Jerome was sitting to my left, typing something into his phone. He had an old flip phone - which he both liked and disliked. He complained every five minutes that his phone was stupid, but then the next second he was closing the flip phone dramatically and was bragging that he owned a flip phone.

Jerome was hard to figure out sometimes, so normally I just left him to his business. But now he turned to me and said, "You should feel honored. Mick loves food, and his house probably stores enough food for a clan of bears to feast on and still feel hungry."

I chuckled, because I knew that was true. Mick may be a pain sometimes, but he was a good guy.

This was how I spent most of my weekends when I was off - hanging out with Mick and Jerome - and sometimes Alfie. Jerome brought his best friend along from time to time, but Mick and I both agreed he was annoying, so we didn't see Alfie a lot nowadays.

If I wasn't off, I'd probably be with my team - my manager, my band, my stylists, et cetera. I loved what I did, but the time it took for them to prepare me, to beautify me, was much too long and time consuming. My manager picked a good spot for my house, far away from any obsessing fangirls or paparazzi to find me. It was a journey to walk all the way up the hill, but it was better than being swarmed by girls and old men with cameras.

My name is Fabian Rutter. My manager wanted me to change my name, to a pen name, but I declined. I wanted my fans (if I ever got fans) to know who I really was, so I kept my real name. My name is Fabian Rutter, and I'm a famous singer.

Well, I'm not as famous as say, Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley. But according to the magazine I had appeared in a while ago, 'I was a rising star with promising talent'. I had a couple of fans that I'd see now and then, and the small arenas I played in to practice usually filled up with girls.

After all, I had been in the music industry for two and a half years. People knew my voice. They knew of Fabian Rutter, that shy artist that people loved (according to Liz, Mick's thirteen-year-old sister), but "would never be as good as One Direction". Liz thinks she has some sort of advantage about living in Liverpool, that she has a "greater chance" of meeting the boy band and marrying them, when in reality she has about as much chance as a dead slug.

I had a lot of fans in the Liverpool area. I haven't toured around the world like other artists have, but when I perform a small concert for charity or such, the arenas fill up with fans. Long story short, I'm a popular artist.

This was what I wanted all along. I'd loved music since I was small, and now I was living my dream by being a popular artist. I never wanted to admit the one thing I didn't like - the "Confidence Lessons" that my manager gave me. Two years ago, when I announced I wanted a record deal, I wasn't confident at all. The record producer loved my voice and my talent, so he gave me a deal - he'd accept me to his record if he gave me personal "Confidence Lessons".

I was supposed to have a "Confidence Lesson" today, but I cancelled because Jerome called to say he was coming over. I would never admit this in public or in front of my friends, but the Confidence Lessons . . . well, they were working. I was gaining more confidence, and I wasn't afraid of performing in front of a crowd anymore.

As Jerome would say, "You don't pee your pants at the sight of a crowd anymore!"

It was getting there. I had fans. I had a Twitter with plenty of followers. People liked my singing voice. That was all I wanted. All I really wanted was for one stranger to hear my voice and like it, because then I'd know that I was doing well.

Mick was talking to me about the sport we were watching when we heard a loud bang outside the front door. Mick bolted up from his seat on the couch and moved into a defensive position, saying, "It could an intruder. Or the paparazzi. Or a crazed fangirl. Don't worry, mate, I'll fight them off."

He started to slowly walk towards the door. I groaned and leaned back against the couch. "Mick, stop being ridiculous. It's the mailman."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because he always comes at three p.m," I gestured to the clock on the wall, "and guess what time it is? Three p.m."

Mick rolled his eyes, realizing I was right, and sat back down on the black leather couch. "Well, I'm not getting the mail."

I didn't feel like lifting my lazy butt off of the couch and walking down the road to the mailbox, so I turned to Jerome, who was muttering under his breath about how dumb his phone was yet again. "Jerome, could you be kind for two minutes and please get the mail? Please?"

He looked up from his phone and cocked an eyebrow. He didn't speak a word, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. You're asking me to be NICE? Not gonna happen, buddy.

"Please? As an early birthday present?" I pleaded, putting on my best pouty face that I still used to the day on my older sister. Mick and I both had sisters - but I was the unlucky one out of us because I didn't just have a sister - I had four sisters. Two older, two younger. It was a pain being the only boy in the family, and not to mention that I was the middle child.

My birthday was in exactly two weeks, on August 21, so technically Jerome could give me an early birthday present, so he groaned and pushed himself off of the couch. "Just this one time, Stutter Rutter," he said, using the nickname he had given me when we were fifteen. He still used it to the day, and we were both nineteen now.

I flashed Jerome a grin as he passed and watched him as he slammed the door shut on his way out. I moved closer to Mick on the couch, who was leaning forward in his seat, watching the game. I tried to follow the game along with him, but the players were moving too fast for my glasses-needing eyes, so I picked my book back off the seat of the couch and started to read the page again.

It was quite a walk to reach the mailbox from my house that I shared with my mom, dad, and four sisters, so I wasn't surprised when I finished a whole two chapters before Jerome came back walking through the door. He had to walk all the way down the hill, and back up again, so it was evident why there were beads of sweat on his forehead.

Jerome trudged over to the kitchen, and threw all of the letters down on the wooden table with a smack. He returned to the common room where Mick and I were sitting, but to my surprise he tossed a single envelope on my lap.

"It's addressed to you," he stated. My eyes widened in suspicion. My manager told me that if I ever got fanmail, it would be sent to his house, as he wrote his address on the "send-fanmail" link on the website. I didn't get much - like I said, I was no Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson - but some considerate fan would write a letter now and then saying how much they liked me.

I wasn't in any clubs. I didn't really do any outgoing activities, except go camping every other month with my family that they force me to go on. I wasn't an "outgoing" person. Why would I get mail?

Jerome was muttering to himself again, and Mick was too caught up in the sport game to ask, so I ripped open the envelope and took out the single item that was inside of it.

It was a photograph of a young girl that couldn't have been more than two years old. Her light-brown hair cropped at her neck, and her grin stretched from ear to ear. Jerome leaned over from his spot on the couch and asked, "Who's that?"

"No idea," I answered. I was analyzing every detail of the photo - wondering who the girl was, who sent it, and why the sent me a photograph of a toddler. I looked it over carefully, trying to find the slightest hint of who she was; her curly dirty-blonde hair and her thin bangs that lay on her forehead, her small, crooked baby teeth, her tiny little nose. "Why would someone send me a photograph of a toddler?" I wondered, voicing my thoughts. I held out the photo for Mick to see.

"I don't know, Fabian," Mick told me, but he was looking over the photo as well. He took it from my hands so her get a closer look. "Mate . . ." he began, "She has your eyes."

"What are you talking about?" I ripped the photo from his hands to see for myself, and you could bet your bottom dollar that the toddler in the photograph certainly did have my eye color - it was the same blue - it wasn't the same color as the ocean or the sky, but like a cement-road blue, sort of. Mick was right - me and the toddler had the same eye color.

"Do you think you're related somehow?" Mick asked me.

"No way," I answered immediately. "I would know. Mum would tell me if I had a new cousin or something probably like two minutes after they were born," I stated. I wassn't lying - my mum loved kids, which doesn't surprise me; she did have five of them.

"No, I mean . . . um . . ." Mick stuttered, rubbing the back of his head, evidently nervous. I motioned for him to go on, and he continued, carefully picking out his words. "What I mean is . . . do you think she's . . . your daughter?"

"No. Absolutely not," I replied, almost too quickly. How could he think the child on the photograph could be my daughter? Sure, we had the same eye color, but blue was a popular color. After all, I never had sex with anybody . . . anybody but . . .

I was typing the fourth line of the second verse when someone sat across from me. I didn't look up; people sat at others tables all the time when there was no other place to sit. I saw her take a sip from the coffee she had ordered from the corner of my eye before she said, "Hi."

I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or not, but no one else talked and the girl sitting across from me didn't say anything either, so I figured she was talking to me. I reluctantly looked up from my laptop screen and replied, "Hi."

The first thing I noticed when I saw her was her smile. Her smile was real. There was nothing fake to it; it wasn't forced, it wasn't obnoxious or ridiculous. Her smile was genuine, and her expression was full of curiosity. She looked like she liked mysteries and challenges.

I shook the memory from my head, and focused back on the photograph in my hands. There was no way this girl could be my daughter.

"Her name is Emma," Jerome deadpanned, bringing me back to reality.

I turned my attention to him. "And you know this, how . . .?"

He pointed to the bottom of the picture, where a word was written in perfect calligraphy. Sure enough, it read Emma. "Okay . . . so her name is most likely Emma. That doesn't help us know who she is. All we know is that she looks about two years old. That's it."

"Is there anything on the back?" Jerome inquired, taking the picture from me and flipping it over. I watched him read the words that were written on the back, and when he processed the sentence, his eyes widened. "Fabian . . . I think you should see this."

"What do you mean?" I hissed, my heart thumping. The possibility was becoming greater and greater, and I couldn't bear it if I saw her name on the back of the photograph -

"Oh, shit," I muttered to myself when I saw the name printed on the back. There was only one sentence written, and it said: I thought you should know that you have a daughter. Signed, Nina.

Nina.

The girl I had a one-night stand with three years ago.

"Fabian . . . are you okay?" Mick asked carefully, but I wasn't listening. There was only one thought running through my mind, echoing in my thoughts over and over. Eventually, I gained the right to speak again.

"Jerome . . . Mick . . . this is my child. This is my daughter. I am this girl's father. I'M A DAD."