Note: A few scenes that wouldn't fit in the original epilogue, but I've decided to upload for completion's sake :)

"Ah, Yuri, just the person." One of Mr Dickenson's Japanese aides, whose name Yuri had once again managed to forget, rushed up to his side. "The Chairman wanted me to let you know that all of your medical results have come back just fine."

It took Yuri a good few seconds to process what the man was trying to say to him. His English still wasn't great, despite hours of private tutoring, and his understanding only became worse when he had to contend with a strong foreign accent. He understood why Dickenson had brought over extra staff to look after the boys after the closure of Biovolt, but that had been two months ago now—why Yuri was still having to deal with caretakers who didn't speak the same language as him was a mystery.

"Thank you," Yuri said eventually.

"You're welcome. Have you seen Boris?" The aide was already glancing around the corridor as if Boris might just appear through a wall.

"Maybe in his room?" he suggested, regretting it the moment the man raced away as he knew Boris was probably in no mood to see anyone, let alone speak to them.

Yuri sighed as he recalled the day Boris had locked himself away, only a week ago, and a faint smile curled his lips. They'd been sat—Boris, Sergei and himself—in a room with with the authorities, again, being questioned relentlessly, again, about the days leading up to the World Championships as if they were playing some bizarre memory game. Boris' voice had finally broken—Yuri had started to think it never would—and he had looked just as stunned as the rest of them by the ridiculous squeak that had escaped his lips, face flushed red with embarrassment. Boris had stood up immediately, marched himself all the way to his room and solidly refused to say a single word since.

His stomach growled suddenly, reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything since early that morning. Apparently having had such a strict meal plan for the past nine years meant that his body was so used to eating at set times, Yuri was unable to break away from the routine. He toyed with the idea of making his way to the canteen at the back of the hotel complex but decided against it, having had enough of trying to decipher whatever everyone else was saying to him and feeling as if he was on display.

So far, every person who had dealt with him had acted as if he were fragile, almost as if they were afraid of breaking him. Yuri wanted to remind them exactly what he had gone through in the Abbey to prove that he wasn't delicate, but to do so would only throw him into another long debate. He stopped by a vending machine near the the hotel reception instead, playing with the coins in his pocket—an allowance generously funded by the BBA as they were still officially under their care—as he looked over his minimal options.

When a deep voice whispered Yuri's name in his ear, he all but leapt a mile in the air and flung his change across the floor.

He whirled around, intent on yelling at whoever had deliberately scared the life from him, and gaped when he realised who it was. Boris stared down at him with a lecherous smirk on his lips, Yuri slapped him across the face in retaliation.

Boris cupped his burning cheek in his hand and laughed, leaving Yuri in awe of just how much older his friend sounded. Yuri's own voice had broken just over a year ago, though he didn't think he sounded all that different, but Boris… it was like listening to another person entirely. Gone was the mocking jeer Yuri was so familiar with, replaced by a husky, almost guttural growl.

The fact that one of the BBA employees had been looking for Boris suddenly became unimportant.

"Are you ordering something from that?" Boris' teased, nodding towards the vending machine. "Because you might want to try putting money in it."

Deeper voice or not, Boris was still capable of taunting. Yuri was so distracted though that his thoughts of eating had been temporarily overridden. "You sound so—"

"Mature?" Boris offered slyly, quirking an eyebrow at Yuri's slack-jawed expression. "Work in progress, sounded like a five-year-old when I was in therapy this morning."

Yuri laughed, Boris' carefree admission breaking him out of his stupor. "I'll have to get one of those recorders the press have," he said, "make sure I catch it next time it happens." From the smirk on Boris' lips it was clear that he couldn't care less if Yuri teased him for his voice.

"So, I bought you something." Boris unfurled his hands from behind his back—Yuri hadn't even noticed he'd been hiding anything, something about being away from the Abbey making him a lot less cautious of his surroundings—and produced a small, flat box with a garish bow on the corner.

Yuri took it and cracked open the lid, revealing half a dozen little cubes wrapped in shiny gold foil. "You boughtthis?" he asked, eyeing the cubes suspiciously. The BBA may have given them an allowance, but Yuri couldn't see any obvious purpose to the box he was holding, let alone a reason for Boris to actually spend money on it.

Boris tilted his head to the side and shrugged lightly. "I didn't exactly buy it. My therapist kept offering them to me and I can't stand them, thought you might want to try."

Yuri quirked an eyebrow. "You stole it, then."

"He keeps trying to get me to take the whole box so he clearly doesn't want them," Boris said, frowning at Yuri's apparent disapproval. "At least if you have them then they're not wasted, right?"

It was a poor excuse, but Yuri could still see something in Boris' flawed logic. He was still no closer to working out what 'they' were, however, as Boris seemed to assume that Yuri knew exactly what he was holding. Not wanting to appear stupid by asking, Yuri lifted the box to his nose and took an experimental sniff. It smelled like something sweet mixed with paper glue, but that was about it.

Boris chuckled, picking up on Yuri's confusion and finally putting him out of his misery. "They're chocolates," he said, plucking one of the cubes from the box and peeling away the foil. "These ones are caramel—too sickly for me."

He held the chocolate by Yuri's lips and Yuri jerked away slightly. "How do you know I'll like it?" He wasn't exactly against trying new things—unlike Boris, who had spent hours in the canteen making sure he'd tried everything at least once—but if Boris wasn't fond of them, Yuri was almost certain he would feel the same.

"Just try it, for god's sake," Boris said, rolling his eyes.

Huffing, Yuri opened his mouth so Boris could pop the chocolate on his tongue and his eyes widened in surprise. Boris was clearly mad; Yuri had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. The chocolate cube cracked open when he bit down and an intensely sweet filling oozed over his tongue.

Yuri tore into another chocolate and stuffed it in his mouth before he'd even finished the first, closing his eyes in pleasure. When they'd been given freshly cooked meals after leaving the Abbey, they had been such an immense improvement on the gruel they were used to eating that Yuri had honestly thought nothing could beat that. The chocolate had just topped his expectations again.

Boris laughed. "Thought you'd like them."

"Like them?" Yuri repeated, licking caramel from his teeth, "I love them. Thanks, Borya."

"You're welcome." Boris knelt down to the floor to collect the change Yuri had dropped—and even with the remaining chocolates stealing his attention, Yuri didn't miss the way he held his knee tight as he stood up again. A bottle of something fizzy dropped from the machine, hissing when Boris opened it. He stood in silence as he drank, watching Yuri polish off the chocolate in one sitting with a playful smile.

Yuri suddenly became immensely thankful that they were the only ones in the corridor. He couldn't care less what they looked like to everyone else, but they'd been warned so much about the potential dangers of the media already that he didn't want particularly want to risk a photograph by some misunderstanding journalist to leak out to the public.

Yuri caught his reflection in the mirror across his room as he dressed, momentarily stunned by just how red his hair was. He hadn't really noticed before—it wasn't as if they had been allowed to admire themselves in a mirror at the Abbey, and in the three months since being released the only reason he came up to his room was to collapse onto his bed and sleep. He finished pulling his shirt over his head and walked back into the bathroom for a closer look. He'd had it cut short again on Kai's suggestion, once the red had grown out far enough, and Yuri hoped to never see the black strands that had littered the barber's floor around his chair ever again.

Running his hand through it, Yuri still couldn't decide whether he preferred it as it was now. Much like everything else that reminded him of Biovolt, Yuri couldn't help but want to get rid of the infamous 'devil horns' that made him easily recognisable in the sporting world. His therapist had told him that disguising things was only a temporary fix, that he would only be able to move on with his life if he worked through and dealt with everything he'd suffered at Valkov's hands.

Yuri scoffed, what did his therapist know about what he'd been through, anyway? Yuri squeezed far too much paste onto his toothbrush in frustration, angrily brushed his teeth and tore his eyes away from his reflection for long enough to dry his face.

He jumped as strong arms suddenly wrapped around his waist from behind, glancing up at the mirror in alarm, panic starting to bubble in his gut until he realised it was only Boris. His know-it-all therapist had also warned him about possible paranoia, and although Yuri had initially rolled his eyes at the notion, he couldn't help but wonder if, maybe, she had been partially right.

Boris' eyes were crinkled with amusement and Yuri instantly relaxed, leaning back slightly against his chest. They hadn't seen much of each other for the last few weeks; Yuri had been at Kai's side almost constantly, in and out of meetings with officials and the authorities who still seemed as if they were testing every word they said for honesty, and Boris had been in and out of medical appointments and physiotherapy sessions after his already weak knee had given out when he'd been doing nothing more than walking down a corridor.

Yuri couldn't help but notice that Boris had managed to gain a good few inches in the last month, as if leaving the Abbey had somehow triggered a sudden growth spurt. They'd been the same height for as long as Yuri could remember, if anything, Boris had been ever so slightly shorter than he was. Now, Boris was tall enough to peek right over the top of Yuri's head.

"You should keep it like that," Boris murmured, balancing his chin on Yuri's shoulder.

Yuri blinked in confusion, quirking an eyebrow at the other boy's reflection. "Keep what, my hair?"

Boris hummed, pulling back slightly so he could lean his head against the back of Yuri's. Yuri would have been lying if he claimed not to have seen his small, contented smile before it was hidden. A flicker of a memory pulled at Yuri's mind and he ducked his eyes to the basin, chewing absently on his lip; the few occasions back at the Abbey when he'd been with Boris—lying on his bunk, at the edge of the outdoor training area—where he'd been sure their friendship had touched on something else, something more. He wondered whether Boris had noticed it, whether he'd noticed it was happening again now, but couldn't bring himself to ask.

Boris sighed heavily behind him, and Yuri felt his body sag slightly, his tight grip around Yuri's waist seemingly the only thing keeping Boris on his feet. "This is so tiring," he said quietly.

"I know. Seriy thinks we can be out of here soon, though."

"Not soon enough." Boris let his arms fall from around Yuri, stepping back to perch on the edge of the bathtub. Yuri watched him absently rub his thumb over his knee.

"Something bothering you?"

Boris lifted his head to look up at Yuri but couldn't quite meet his eyes. He opened his mouth but quickly closed it again and swallowed, his gaze flicking to the bathroom door. Yuri took the hint and kicked it shut, not that there should be anyone else hovering in his room, but he understood Boris' anxiety. A long minute passed, and Yuri eventually took a seat at Boris' side when it became evident he wasn't really that willing to part with his thoughts.

"Whatever it is, Borya, you can tell me."

Boris nodded minutely, releasing a breath Yuri hadn't realised he'd been holding. "Do you think they'll really be able to get us somewhere together?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

Yuri was both stunned and grateful that Boris wanted to stay with him. They hadn't been apart for over nine years, not really, even for the year Boris had been away they'd still been in the same building. Always within a moment's walk from each other, Yuri doubted any corridor in the Abbey had been walked as much as the one that linked rooms 212 and 309.

A smile ghosted over Yuri's lips, spreading wider when he linked his fingers with Boris' own and he didn't pull away. "I won't let them separate us, Borya, I'll promise you that," he said, leaning sideways to rest his head on Boris' shoulder. "Do you honestly think they'd trust us living alone?"

Boris chuckled, the invisible weight lifting from his neck. "I wouldn't."

"Exactly. Besides, it's you and me against the world remember?" Yuri tilted his head slightly to take in Boris' reflective expression. He didn't have to say anything, it was clear he hadn't forgotten their age-old promise. "Borya and Yura against the might of Palace Square's pockets."

Boris grinned, glancing down at Yuri with humour sparkling in his eyes. "More like Borya alone against the might of Palace Square's pockets. I did the hard work, all you had to do was stand there and look lost," he said, raising a sly eyebrow at the mock-disbelief that settled on Yuri's face. "You really were a natural at that, by the way."

"Hey, I did steal a wallet once," Yuri spluttered, jerking away from Boris' and scowling at him.

Boris laughed. "Yeah, two seconds later the guy caught on and shouted at you for it." He glanced over at Yuri's indignant expression and bit down on his lip to try and silence his laughter. "You cried and gave it back, remember?"

Someone knocked on the main door to Yuri's room, effectively cutting off his retort. Not that he could say anything to defend himself, he really had just stood there in tears and handed back the man's wallet whilst Boris furiously waved his arms in the air at the other end of the square. He'd only been on the streets for a few weeks.

"Who is it?" Yuri called, hoping that it was just another BBA employee trying to be helpful so he could send them away and carry on reminiscing with Boris.

"Kai."

Almost instantly, Boris' humour vanished and was replaced with a darkening scowl. Yuri hoped it was only because he was jealous of Yuri's developing friendship with Kai, and not because he was ungrateful for what Kai had managed to achieve for them.

Yuri unlatched the door and pulled it open, Kai stood on the other side, buried in his mobile as usual. Kai glanced up, seemingly stunned that the door was actually open, and Yuri waited for a few seconds until he dragged Kai into an embrace. He hadn't yet been able to properly thank Kai for all he had done, and he hoped his intense gratitude was clear enough for Kai to pick up on.

Kai's arms settled loosely—uncertain—around Yuri's waist, apparently unsure what to actually do in such an intimate situation. It confirmed Yuri's suspicions that Kai struggled with physical contact, if nothing else.

Twisting slightly, Yuri caught sight of Boris hovering in the bathroom doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed and lips curled in a sneer; a look of pure disdain, aimed at Kai, unsurprisingly. For all Boris had claimed that he wasn't jealous of Kai, he made a very poor job of proving it. Yuri had tried to tell him that he had nothing to be jealous of; Kai could never replace him after all, but Boris had refused to listen.

"Yura, let go," Kai said, arms held rigid at his sides. Yuri took pity on him and did as he was told, feeling Boris step up close behind him a second later. Kai merely nodded at him, they were as bad as each other. "I just got off a call with Aleksey—"

"Belkin?" Yuri's eyes shot wide, they hadn't heard from the former guard for over a month. "How is he?"

Kai shrugged, taking a step away from the door to let Boris and himself out. "He's fine, he's been working non-stop trying to sort out a place for you to live, thinks he's finally found something."

"Really?" Yuri asked, glancing up at Boris with an elated grin. "For all of us? Seriy and Vanya as well?"

"If they want." Kai nodded. "I still don't know what's happening with getting Vanya into school, but Aleksey said Seriy should be old enough to sign off on the house. Just a case of me applying for the funding then, probably take a month or so to go through. After that, it's yours."

Yuri forgot completely about Kai's social awkwardness and threw himself at him, muffling his laughter in Kai's shoulder.

Even before he had made it to the hotel lounge, Yuri could distinctly hear Boris shouting, angry with someone. Yuri wasn't sure who until he heard Ivan yelling back in retaliation. He sighed, stopping just short of the doorway. He'd almost got to the point of actually enjoying staying at the BBA complex, especially the weeks Kai was over from Japan with the other Bladebreakers, but now, with two weeks still to go before they officially owned their own house, Yuri couldn't wait to get out.

Boris had been prescribed a cocktail of medication that had, almost immediately, started wreaking havoc on his mental stability. His unpredictable mood-swings had been driving Yuri insane.

Nobody noticed him enter the room, too focused on the rising argument. Sergei had stepped in at some point, restraining Boris against his chest with his arms pinned at his sides. Two of Kai's teammates were in the room—thankfully, because there was only one of Sergei—and Ivan was almost strangling himself with his own shirt to get free of Rei's seemingly vice-like grip. Max, who even Kai had admitted was nothing short of a miracle worker when it came to turning arguments into civilised discussions, didn't seem to be having much luck trying to calm anything down.

Everyone was shouting at everyone, the noise growing so loud that Yuri wanted to cover his ears. Voices piled on top of each other—three loud, intense Russians, underpinned by Max's gentle English and whatever Rei was trying to say—he couldn't even make sense of what the argument was about. He drew a deep breath, took a step forward and focused every ounce of his irritation into his voice.

"Enough!"

It worked, the room falling into silence almost immediately. Even the two Bladebreakers who, unless Kai had started giving them lessons, didn't understand him seemed to get the hint from the tone of his voice alone. Speaking of Kai… Yuri glanced around quickly but couldn't see him anywhere. Probably a good thing; Yuri wouldn't have put it past Boris to try hitting Kai as well.

Boris was the first to recover, seizing the opportunity to lurch out of Sergei's slackened grip and punching Ivan so hard in the stomach that he staggered away and crumpled backwards over the coffee table, sending drinks flying. Sergei's fist lashed out instantly, catching Boris square on the back of his head and sending him sprawling on the carpet.

Nobody moved for what felt to Yuri like hours. Max looked utterly stunned, eyes wide as he pressed his hand over his mouth. Ivan slowly pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the table, his face twisted in pain. Sergei had made the decision to literally kneel on Boris' back, effectively pinning him to the floor despite his loud protesting. Yuri caught Rei staring at something over his shoulder and turned to where Takao stood in the doorway behind him.

He'd never seen someone look so utterly horrified before.

Yuri's laughter was enough to break the thick atmosphere that had settled in the room, startling Takao into ramming his shoulder against the doorframe, though Yuri couldn't help but wonder whether it was shock or the fact that he'd probably never heard him laugh before, maybe didn't even think he was capable of it. His mood sank slightly at the idea; they had a lot of work to do if they planned to pull their reputation away from the cruelty of Biovolt, that was for certain.

Takao cleared his throat nervously, raising a hand in Yuri's direction. "Morning, Kai just sent me to say breakfast's ready."

Yuri nodded as Takao's two friends thanked him. He frowned over at where Sergei was still refusing to let Boris up, talking quietly with him in an attempt to calm him down. It was clear it wasn't working, and Yuri knew from experience that he wasn't likely to get anything useful out of Boris until he had managed to control his temper again. He turned his attention to Ivan instead as he settled on the sofa opposite.

"What was that about?" he asked, sticking with Russian as some things didn't need to be shared. Yuri noticed Max follow Takao out from the corner of his eye and couldn't come up with a reason for why Rei elected to stay behind.

"It wasn't my fault!" Ivan insisted, "he started it, said something about me not being part of the team."

Yuri felt his eyebrows shoot up, glancing back over his shoulder as Sergei cautiously got to his feet, this time keeping a white-knuckle grip on Boris' arm. "Was that all?" Boris may have been a temperamental maniac, but he wouldn't have got so worked up over something so trivial. "What did you say to him?"

The briefest flash of guilt flickered across Ivan's eyes, instantly making Yuri suspicious. "I…" He trailed off with a shrug, weighing his hands in front of him. "I may have said something worse."

Yuri scowled, but was distracted from answering when the door opened again behind him. He felt Kai step up beside the sofa before he actually saw him, arms crossed as he surveyed the damage.

"I leave for two minutes and there's chaos," Kai said, the tiniest of smirks playing at his lips. His eyes flicked from Ivan to Boris and back again. "I could hear the screaming from outside."

Yuri gave an exasperated sigh, turned fully towards Kai and formed the most serious expression he could muster. "Is it too late to change my mind about the house?"

Ivan was still sneering at Boris a half hour later as they ate, the older boy shooting back dirty looks of his own in response and earning himself an elbow in the ribs from Sergei. Yuri was immensely glad that Sergei had the brilliant idea of sitting them at opposite ends of the table, as far away from each other as possible, because he certainly wasn't going to take responsibility if they ended up in another fight.

His attention was distracted by Takao reaching half way over the table to get more food onto his plate, instead of just asking someone to pass it to him.

"Does he always do that?" Yuri asked, lowering his voice so that only Kai would pick up on it.

Kai grit his teeth, biting out something in Japanese that startled Takao for all of two seconds before he started eating again. "Unfortunately." He was cut off from saying anything else when his mobile beeped, the vibrations nearly sending it dancing off the table. Kai growled in frustration at the name on the screen and spared Yuri a quick apology before he left the hall.

Yuri glanced down at his own plate and decided he wasn't hungry.

He looked over the table and came to the irritating conclusion that everyone else was talking and he was being ignored. Ivan had managed to wrangle himself into an energetic conversation with Kyouju and Takao, apparently surprising them both with his knowledge of beyblade design; so much so that Kyouju—who Yuri hadn't really spoken to much and had honestly pinned as the Bladebreakers' mascot and nothing more—was asking him for advice and upgrade suggestions.

Sergei was talking to Max about their future living arrangement—Sergei seemed to have started the conversation, though there was no doubt that Max had taken it over. At least he was trying to speak slowly for Sergei's sake. Max was reeling off a list of things they would need, apparently things he'd had to come to grips with when he'd moved from America to Japan, and then the conversation spiralled off into something else entirely and it looked as though Sergei was just humouring him.

What stunned him the most, however, was what was occurring at the far end of the table. A conversation, an actual conversation—albeit stunted and not necessarily easy considering that, of the four of them, Boris was struggling the most with learning English—between Yuri's closest friend and the boy he had been ordered to kill if necessary. Yuri had been dubious at first about sitting them opposite each other, but now he couldn't help but smile, the easy-going look on Rei's face giving him hope that he may have forgiven Boris for his actions. He couldn't hear what they were saying, only a dull murmur through the commotion happening right beside his ear, but the longer he watched, the more he could see the hardened mask slipping from Boris' face.

And then the craziest thing happened, sending the entire table into a shocked silence; both Boris and Rei laughed. Not just a chuckle or a casual snicker at an off-hand joke, no, actual bottom-of-the-stomach guffaws that crinkled Boris' eyes and left Rei in tears.

Yuri couldn't have been happier.