Disclaimer: All characters belong to Hidekaz Himaruya!

A/N: Hello, everybody! Sorry about my disappearance, I've been ultra-busy with work, and even missing 5 minutes of study time could seriously affect my revision DX But now I'm granting myself minutes of the day just to add bits and pieces onto my stories and future chapters.

Enjoy!

Despite the turbulent week that Berwlad has been put through, Sunday came and went with no incident. Peter was looking forward to next Saturday when he invites his classmate/crush Sheila over for a movie night, and Tino was gushing over what brand of popcorn he should get from the supermarket and what other snacks the youngsters would want. Peter complained, saying that he wanted to be independent in getting things organised, but he quickly changed his mind when he realised how little pocket money he's got in his piggy bank.

"Why is friendship so expensive…" he shook his head and Tino giggled.

But with Berwald, who was silent and stoic as always, was dreading the next Saturday when he has his 'date' with Gilbert at the Starlight Glitter club…

"Honey? Is something the matter?" Tino asked him suddenly. The Swede shook his head.

It's now Monday, and as soon as Tino left to take Peter to school, Berwald immediately went to his laptop at the kitchen table and got onto the internet. The Swede decided it's time to do some digging into Tino's past.

But… the only thing that Berwald knew was that Tino was born in Finland and was raised in a care home his whole life.

"Ugh… that doesn't narrow it down very well…" Berwald murmured just as a list of care homes popped up. There were over thousands of care homes which are still open. Over 9000.

"Wait, he said it got closed down and he was given a home…" He entered the year the care home got shut down and a list of 40 care homes popped up – the 40 that were only shut down that year. But there was one care home name that had links to various newspaper articles online.

The Swede opened a few and saw the same name in every one. "Raising Lives."

But he saw the same words in every one. "Murder." "Child abuse." "Sexual assault." "Unfair trial." "Biased evidence." "Not guilty."

Berwald's eyes widened the more he read through the articles. But no matter how many long words the articles used or how different the format or language (it took him a while to understand Finnish), the basic story went like this. For years Raising Lives was raising homeless children, but because of the location in the mountains concealed by thick forests, it was rare for inspectors to come visit the Home, which gives the workers time to hide bruises and cuts that they inflicted on the children. But in spite of being uncovered by an inspector and the owner taken to court, the case was dropped because of strange irregularities in the evidence that couldn't be properly explained. The articles didn't properly specify what the strange evidence was, but Berwald made a bet that the bastard care home owner had connections within the Justice Ministry who liked him so much. Liked him enough to overlook the damaged minds and bodies of the poor children.

He thought of Tino and the times he gets to see his body when it's naked. He never noticed any scars or cuts as if there was never any physical damage inflicted onto him. Yet his mind can snap at moments when Peter is out the room and at night time… The news articles only describe what happened, but not what happened to the 40 individual children in that care home. Berwald feels that if he pries any more, he'll break Pandora's Box and hell will break loose. But IVAN told him to look into Tino's past. But for what? Ivan is rich and powerful, he has Toris working for him, so why make someone else do the snooping while threatening to kill their family?

Luckily Tino will be out all day at work and Berwald can just call in sick and have Annika take over for today's duties. And Gilbert…

The Swede dismissed that name and forced it to the back of his mind. The last thing he wanted right now is for that flirty German to hang around him and unknowingly remind him of the sex they had.

The care home that Tino was raised in isn't actually far. All Berwald has to do is drive for an hour to get to the border of Finland and then spend 10 minutes looking for the isolated care home and see if he could uncover anything that the media has missed out and then return to Sweden before Tino returns in the evening. Thank goodness that Peter is visiting his friend's house for study time until 8 in the evening…

So he stepped out of his apartment with sandwiches in his briefcase to snack on later and locked the door and entered the elevator. It wasn't until he reached the ground floor that he told himself that he should've worn ordinary clothes instead of this stuffy work suit. Darn it. Ah well.

He took out his mobile and called in sick to a worried Annika before hearing a voice from besides his car. "Hey, Ber~!"

Berwald blinked and stared at a woman with waist length black hair and a black-and-red checked dress that reached her knees. Her striking red eyes caught him by surprise and he looked closely at the woman's features with a heavy sigh.

"Gilbert… what do ya think yer doin', dressing up as a woman?" he asked.

Gilbert's grin stretched. "I don't want that creep Ivan to see me with you! So what are you doing? Going to work? Can I come along?"

A/N: Ok, I'm so sorry that this chapter was extremely short, but I haven't worked on this fanfic for a while and I'll need to re-read the other chapters to help refresh my ideas and memory.