Work Text:
Steve didn’t get it at first. This is just the future. Cameras on every corner, your phone listens in, your external emails are subject to review at any time. That’s just what its like now. You don’t get privacy, you don’t get anonymity, not like Steve had in the forties. But eventually, he understood. That’s just life. Trade the removing the Jim Crow laws for your time. Your attention for gay rights.
There’s nothing the ordinary people can do, you know.
Steve took a long time to understand this one, probably because some senator or another had given him the line the day he’d been reading about the Stonewall Riots. He liked that bite of history because ordinary people had made a difference! And protesting was perfectly legal and a well-known option these days.
He later realised that yes, the ordinary person can do something, but for them, the risk is so high few are willing to pay.
But isn’t it convenient?
But is it? Steve likes to wander around the shops, likes to browse through all the types of cereal you can buy now, test the softness of some of the fruits, maybe some plums for old times sakes. God, he misses Bucky. He can’t check the colour of a cut of meat with one of their apps.
And it’s not just shopping. A newspaper doesn’t have pop-up video ads he can’t escape. The park doesn’t feature the wall of advertisement boards that the gym does. His path through the market isn’t determined by the carefully crafted algorithm run out of centralised hubs in every state.
You have a unique kind of safety.
It takes him a very long time to understand that very, very few people get the sort of protection JARVIS provides.
Which is to say- very few people aren’t watched by the government, don’t have their lives sold to whomever can pay the right price. Sure, they technically own Steve, and he is monitored, but that’s always been on paper. Nobody has ever tried to use that against Steve.
Nobody could ever really disappear Steve.
But isn’t crime better now?
No, not really. There are as many and varied criminals as before, and some are even worse, being supported by the government. And if that’s what it takes, Steve is going to become one, too. Captain America is loyal to the country, and the country are the people. And if the people are being controlled, well its his duty to free them.
And that’s when he really learns how far his country has fallen.