Cupboards and Cryogenics

Chapter 5

Taking care of a child should be simple. All that's required for looking after Potter is feeding him, making sure he's clean, and making him sleep.

Yet Potter is old enough that these things are not a constant process. The boy doesn't loudly wail and demand feeding every few hours like an infant would. Somehow the Asset knows that is what infants do, despite not having any experience with caring for them.

So far, Potter has not asked for food at all, instead simply waiting for the Asset to give it to him and assure him he can eat it. If it were the Dursley boy the Asset was looking after, there probably would have been a thousand demands in these past 11.2 hours, 98% of which probably could have been ignored. Unlike Potter, that boy did not need extra nourishment.

Potter probably will not need to be fed again for a few more hours.

The Asset dries the boy's messy, black hair and realizes that it is untamable as it continues to stick up in every direction. He checks the boy's injuries. The cuts from the plate have healed a surprising amount, as if the boy is has slightly enhanced healing himself.

"Tank you." The boy thanks him for the bath, or perhaps bandaging him, as if it was a gift. He had done the same thing with the food earlier this morning.

Fortunately, the boy knows how to properly deposit bodily wastes in a toilet, despite having an accident sometime in the escorts' car when the Asset was fighting that enemy asset who wielded the weaponized stick. Potter demonstrates this ability after the bath. He almost doesn't pull his pants up when he's done, as if he can't bring himself to dress himself in new clothes, so the Asset hoicks them up.

"Try not to urinate in your pants, Potter." The Soldier says, remembering last night.

"Yessir." The boy nods quickly. "I don't need nappies, but I'm not a big boy like Aun' Tuna told Dudley when he went potty."

"You are undersized, Potter." The Asset agrees. The boy's eyes light up again when his surname is used.

"Did...did you knowed my Mummy and Daddy?" The Asset catches just a glimpse of the boy's wide, hopeful green eyes, before Potter immediately ducks his head and stammers out an apology. His parents seem to have been a forbidden subject with the Dursley family.

"It's did you know." The Asset corrects. He does not know the answer to that question, does not even know who the boys parents are, or were. He could have been sent to kill them. The fact that he doesn't remember a previous target named Potter is meaningless- he's not always told his targets' names.

Maybe Potter's parents were influential somehow, and the boy would gain HYDRA some political favor? What other use would the boy be for them?

It does not matter, it is not the Soldier's place to question the reasoning behind his missions. Even when he is delaying the mission, such as now.

"Aun' Tuna says my mummy an' daddy died in a caw cwash." Potter mumbles, mispronouncing the last two words. The Asset remembers the vision of the mission where he'd made the targets' deaths look like a car accident, but somehow he doesn't think those targets were this boy's parents.

"I did not know them." The Asset answers eventually. The child looks slightly disappointed.

Feeding and bathing Potter have only taken up 56 minutes, leaving a large amount of time with no discernible objective.

DELIVER THE BOY.

He should, but he doesn't. It is still unclear why, aside from the fact he is defective.