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In this world, he's the son of a nobleman. He lives within the castle walls, since his father is an advisor to the king, and he's been best friends with the prince since they were young. Somehow, he knows that the prince has been betrothed to a princess in another land, has been since they were five. Knowing this has not stopped him from falling in love with Bucky. He doesn't think anything could stop him from falling in love with Bucky. They're in their twenties now, and the date of Bucky's wedding is coming quickly. Steve wants so badly to stop, to admit to Bucky that he loves him, but he can't. That's not how this story goes. So he wakes up every day, heart full of love he can never act on, and falls asleep each night praying that someday he can tell Bucky that he loves him. Soon, the day of the wedding arrives, and he watches and grins and hides his hurt in order to support his best friend. That night, after watching Bucky and his new bride ride off in a carriage, off to spend their first month exploring their country, Steve closes his eyes.

The next time he opens them, he's on a ship. His ship. Well, his and Bucky's ship. Steve might be the captain, but his best friend is his first mate, and in his head, that makes it Bucky's ship as much as it is his. They're a merchant vessel, for the most part. At least, that's what the royal navy that patrols these waters thinks. If they have a crew that sneaks out to steal just a bit from the crown each time they're in port, just so that they can distribute it among the people suffering in their tiny towns on other islands, nobody else needs to know. It's not like they take enough to really be noticed anyways. Steve and Bucky had been some of those suffering people before they joined up with the navy for a few years and then on the merchant ships and eventually worked their ways up to sailing their own. They had just left port again, headed out to the next island on their path. It's just them and the open sea (and, well, their crew). And god, Steve loves it. He's living a dream with his best friend. His best friend that he might be a little in love with, but that's besides the point. It's not like he can admit to Bucky how much he loves him anyways. Bucky doesn't like men. But just living this life with him, that's enough. At least, it is until the day that they're boarded by pirates. Steve and Bucky chose their crew well, they both had experience in battle and with the life they lived, they needed their crew to be fighters too. And they were good fighters. Eventually, they had managed to fight off the pirates, disconnect from their ship and flee. But when Steve looked around, watching the pirate ship grow smaller in the distance, he realized that he didn't see Bucky. No one had seen Bucky. He wasn't anywhere on the ship. It wasn't until later that one of the younger crewmates, Peter, who had been injured in the fight, told him that Bucky had been knocked out and taken onto the pirate ship. It takes everything in Steve to not immediately turn the ship around, to go back and hunt that ship down until he had Bucky safely back on their ship, but his crew is wounded. They can't continue to fight, that's why they fled in the first place. But seeing the anguish on their captain's face, the crew turns the ship around anyways. They were also grieving the loss of their first mate. They would go back for him. But by the time they returned, the pirate ship was gone. That night, if Steve cried himself to sleep, no one else had to know.

This time, he wakes up on a spaceship. He's a member of a crew of inter-galaxy beings, exploring the reaches of space beyond their coalition. He's ex-military, now part of the team of translators and diplomats ready to interact with any other species they might find out there. Bucky is one of the other members of that team, a quiet man with a mysterious background that Steve has grown close to over their years together on this ship. Close enough, that Steve thinks maybe if he expressed his romantic interest in Bucky soon, it might be reciprocated. That can't be what he focuses on now, though, because they're getting close to another planet. Within a few days, he and Bucky will be part of the group descending to the planet's surface to take samples of the land and extend their greetings to any beings that live there. They're meant to stay on the planet's surface for a week, if they can. But after two days, finding no forms of life on the barren planet, watching as clouds gather in the distance, they make the decision to return to their ship. Their camp is broken down quickly, but not quick enough in the face of the approaching storm. Steve makes it to the transit pod, turning back to usher the rest of their team inside so they can depart before the worst of the storm hits, and he can do nothing but watch in horror as Bucky is hit by a piece of flying debris and swept away. The team has to hold Steve back from going back out, they have to leave now or they'll all die. No one wants to leave Bucky, but there's no other choice. They have to confine Steve into one of the compartments of the pod as they take off, afraid that he'll try to go back through the door, to fall back to the surface of the planet. Maneuvering through the storm is hard enough without their own teammate doing their best to sabotage the efforts in his grief. By the time they make it back to the ship and open up the compartment door, they find Steve asleep, his eyes swollen shut from his tears.

It continues to happen. Steve wakes up in the body of another version of himself, in another world, so close to Bucky and never quite being able to appreciate that he has Bucky. And then he loses Bucky. In some way or another, Bucky is gone and he can't do anything about it. Sometimes, it's not his fault, but no matter what, he can find a reason to blame himself for it. For whatever pain the other versions of Bucky went through. Because truly, all he does is cause Bucky pain. He knew it in his own world, he knows it all of these as well. Bucky is better off without it.

Somehow, Steve opens his eyes to a familiar site. He's back on the platform. He's not wearing his time travel suit anymore, but he's back home, right? His joy is short lived when he looks over to see the smiles falling from Sam and Bucky's face. When he looks down at his hands to see wrinkles that weren't there before, a ring on his left middle finger that certainly wasn't there before. Was he... old? Had he lived another life without realizing it? He saw the hurt in Bucky's eyes as he drew his own conclusions. He went to speak, to try to explain, but then he remembered what he had seen, what he had put Bucky through in all of those other realities. What he had put Bucky through in his own reality. Maybe it was better this way. Better that he wouldn't push his feelings on Bucky, better that he wouldn't burden him with his problems. Bucky would find someone who would treat him better than Steve ever could, would never hurt him. Steve had hurt him enough. Seeing his Bucky one last time was more than he deserved. He was old, he would die soon, and Bucky would be better for it. Better without him.

What Steve didn't know, was that what he saw was never the end of the story. That the story of Steve and Bucky was always one full of loss and heartbreak and grief, but also one full of love and devotion and finding each other again. He wasn't supposed to only live the losses. It was supposed to be a gift, to show him that in every universe, there was a Steve for every Bucky and a Bucky for every Steve, and that no matter what they faced, they would always find their way back to each other. It was supposed to be a gift from the stones, but like so many other things, it had also gone wrong.

For several months after returning to his own reality, Steve lived in a small retirement community in upstate New York, as far as he could be from Bucky, and Brooklyn, without leaving his home state. He didn't tell anyone where he moved to, not wanting them to have to feel obligated to visit or see him. He saw the pain in their eyes when he appeared on the platform, heard the hurt in their voices. It wasn't their fault that all he did was hurt the ones he loved.

But there came a day the following spring when there was a knock on his door. It was Bucky. Bucky, who had a dream a few weeks before, of visiting other realities and seeing what Steve had been supposed to see. Of a group of entities, trying to explain what had happened, what they had tried to do and how it had gone wrong. And most importantly, how it could be fixed. So Bucky had found Stephen Strange, who had one of the stones in his possession, which would be enough to make it right. All Bucky had was this dream and his love for Steve, and he prayed it would be enough.