"This…doesn't sound like me."

The script looks small in his hands. Everything does. He didn't have time between the weapons and the war and the ice and the after, to get used to his new body when it came to minutiae.

(Although, he supposes, the circus monkey routine is familiar enough.)

"Captain Rogers—can I call you that? Mr. Rogers is already taken." The guy is practically talking to himself. "It's for a good cause! Kids respond well to—well, extremes. We're red, white, blue, and ready!"

Someone plucks the script out of his hand. Someone leads him by the elbow in front of a green panel, and he lets himself be led. What's he going to do, start throwing punches? There isn't anyone who looks like Hitler.

The lights are blinding and everything's loud. Two weeks ago, New York was falling.

He didn't think they'd cash in this fast.

Except, well, cash is always fast.

Isn't that his whole problem with Tony?

Someone is shouting in his ear. The lines will be on the screen. The lines will be on the screen.

You know what you did was wrong. Question is, how're you gonna make things right? Maybe you were trying to be cool. But take it from a guy who's been frozen for sixty-five years, the only way to really be cool, is to follow the rules. We all know what's right, we all know what's wrong. Next time those turkeys try to convince you to do something that you know is wrong, just think to yourselves, What Would Captain America Do?

He takes off the helmet. It's a rubber replica.

"I don't want to do this anymore," he starts to say, but it sounds too weak, too pitiful, and he can never be that. Captain America is much more real than Steve Rogers is, or ever will be—to these people.

He might as well play the part.

.

Natasha is the one who explained the Internet.

"Like one big…conversation," he says, not quite believing. Radio, he gets. Even computers, a little. But this—

"Don't Google yourself," she warns, with a cryptic smile.

He doesn't even know what that means.

He only knows what she meant when he does, and sees a thousand rumors and as many mockeries.

.

"I can't believe you did that, Cap," Tony teases. The square chunk of ice in his scotch wobbles from wall to wall of glass. Steve watches it, mouth a thin line.

"Just trying to do a public service."

Tony is still laughing. "Bet my dad wishes we'd had a pre-recorded version of you to give me the Talk. Hell, you'd set anyone on the straight and narrow."

Steve doesn't say anything. He barely remembers anything about it now, the fluorescence and the shouting and the canned lines marching off his lips like so many soldiers.

.

"I hear the kids like it, at least." Natasha probably means to be comforting.

"No, they don't," Steve says.

And hey, at least he knows.