War for Genius

16.- Clarifications

Hello everyone, here's the new chapter for this week! this week I'm updating before than I use to since tomorrow, I'll have a busy day and I don't know if I would be able to update. For this chapter, I wanted to try a new point of view in this chapter. It was kind of funny to write this character, so I hope you'll like it.

As always, I'd like to thank Empro-8 for helping me editing this story. Honestly, without her help this wouldn't be as good as it is, so thank you very much Empro-8 you're amazing!

Welp, I'll stop talking and let you read the chapter, enjoy it! 😉

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From the corner where Graves was hiding, the falcon couldn't believe what he was seeing. The boy he'd been watching for past fifteen days was now allowing Beaks to hug him. How was that possible? From the beginning it was very clear that this duckling hated Waddle's CEO. Why now would he let himself be comforted by him? At first Graves thought the boy did it out of fear, but his posture, his... peace of mind at Mark's gesture made him realize that his acceptance of that hug was totally and absolutely genuine, that couldn't be the result of fear.

To be honest, the hawk had a hard time believing that the boy dressed in red had been so affected after seeing the videos that Beaks showed him. It could be told immediately that the parrot had modified each and every one of those videos or simply cut them at the point where he was interested. How could that kid with a cap not realize that?

But then, Falcon remembered what Beaks had said. The boy was tired. Physically and mentally exhausted, thanks to his work in caring for him. In that state of fatigue, it was logical to think that the boy had a harder time distinguishing subtle details that showed what he had just seen was falsehood.

Graves sighed, in these last days, his emotions hadn't been the most positive in the world. He was angry, upset, furious... in the time that passed from Beaks left until he returned, the falcon had been almost as trapped as that duckling. The difference between both was that Graves could go wherever he wanted from the building. If he needed to go out to get supplies, he could do it, no problem. Although the first civilization point was quite far from their location, which meant a long car ride to get there. But at least Graves could go out. And besides, he'd access the internet, always using fake accounts so nobody could obviously track him. But nothing he could do was enough, and that frustrated him. So, Graves took out all his frustration on Huey, since technically, it was the boy's fault that they both ended up in that situation.

If the boy had accepted Beaks' offer from the beginning, neither would have been forced to stay here. But the boy just had to be stubborn and decline. Two weeks was way longer than the falcon had planned for this job.

Honestly, he thanked Beaks for coming, because he didn't know if he could take the monotony of babysitting much longer without hearing from his employer. The falcon still remembered, for example, what happened the first day he went to bring food to the boy.

The moment he opened the door, he made the mistake of swinging it wide open, giving the boy a free path to run away, to the falcon's surprise. Falcon immediately dropped the plate and the glass and launched himself to chase the duckling. It didn't take long to catch him. And despite the boy's pleas, Graves locked him up again. After making sure that the boy wouldn't escape, he took the decision to deprive him of food until the next day as punishment for his escape attempt. But that... was something that his employer didn't need to know about, after all. The duckling was hardly out three minutes.

Since then, every time Graves went to see the boy, he opened the door just a little, to make sure the boy couldn't leave. In the early days, he constantly had to wait for Huey to move away or look hard at him since he couldn't speak to him. As time went by, the boy came to understand that no matter how much the door opened, he wasn't allowed to get out of there. So, after the first week, the boy simply stopped trying, even asking questions. Another time, which was apparently extremely bitter for the boy, was the moment when Graves brought him the bucket and toilet paper where the boy had to do his needs. The falcon wasn't surprised at all at the boy's horrified expression, as if he couldn't give credit to what he was seeing.