EDITED!!

So, here's another fic from yours truly. This one came right out of nowhere, a complete what-if. An alternate take on what might have driven Bones to join Starfleet. Hint: It don't have a damn thing to do with divorcing his wife. He lost everything for a different reason. Read on, review, and let me know what you think! This is slow-building, so if something doesn't quite make sense, have patience and know that things will eventually come together and, for everyone, make more sense.

All the usual disclaimers apply. I do not own nor will I ever own (besides a uniform I bought online for Starfest, the movies, and various and asunder other odds and ends) anything belonging to the estate of Gene Roddenberry, Paramount, or the creators of Star Trek.

AN: I took some liberties with the uniforms. Basically, I transplanted a sturdier, un-pajama-ish version of the uniforms from The Motion Picture for the Cadet and planetary uniforms you see everybody wearing until the armada launches. Not my favorite movie, but the concept of the uniforms worked for the purposes of my story. I'll post a link to the website I found that gives you a run-down of all uniforms ever worn in Star Trek (not including the 2009 reboot, sadly, but that's why I used the concept from TMP.) Okay, I'm done now.

Chapter One

Leonard McCoy had it all. A satisfying, rewarding job as a surgeon and general physician in Savannah, Georgia, a loving wife and a beautiful little girl. His wife's name was Kathryn, he called her Kitty, his daughter was Joanna. He'd been married for eight years, a father for the past five. There was just one problem. He didn't remember any of it. The doctors – neurologists, psychologists, behavioral specialists, quacks the lot of them, weren't sure how many years were actually missing from his memory, but it was a pretty hefty chunk. So, with almost no memory of who he was or what he was, Leonard had technically run away from home. Packing a backpack with clothes, his wallet, a medical textbook or two, and a photo-album of pictures, he'd left the following note for the woman sleeping in his bed: "I'm sorry for everything, I've gone to find myself. I remember loving you, just not why. Goodbye, Kathryn."

Well, he'd found himself, alright. Halfway across the fucking country in some small-town dive in Middle-of-Nowhere, Iowa. No, that wasn't fair. This place did have a name. His long-term memory might be non-existent, but short-term was functional. The town was Riverside, Iowa, home to a Starfleet shipyard where they were building what promised to be a beautiful starship when it was complete. First of her kind, they said. The bar he was sitting in at the moment was aptly-named The Liftoff and sat a half-mile from the gates of Riverside Starfleet Shipyard 2-1A, which was home to the unfinished but promising future of Starfleet's armada. As Leonard sat at the bar, drink in one hand, he stared at a picture of a woman hugging a little girl. He was trying to remember their names, but he couldn't. Leonard shuffled to the next picture and looked at it sadly. The woman from the first picture was also in this one, but so was he. It was a wedding picture taken on his wedding day, which he didn't remember except when he looked at pictures. On the back of the picture, someone had written the names of the people in the picture. Her name was Kitty, according to the picture. On the back of the picture were these words: "Leonard and Kitty. On our wedding day." There was a date as well, but it didn't mean anything. So he had a wife and apparently a little girl who looked just like him. But thanks to an overzealous, somewhat incompetent hit-man, Leonard's memories were fragmented at best. Somebody had tried to kill him and it hadn't worked out, but that didn't give him much comfort. There were things he just couldn't remember. Like when they had told him that he was a doctor, he hadn't believed them. He had no memory of going through medical school, or the four years of pre-med. Or if he had enemies who hated him enough to want him dead. Hell, he barely remembered his own family! So here he was, in a small Iowa farm-town, trying to remember his wife's name without having to look at the back of a picture, looking for a fresh start.

The not-so promising future of Starfleet crowded The Liftoff tonight, laughing and carousing and generally just making a lot of noise, and Leonard kept looking at the door, half-expecting a recruiting officer to come strolling in and make him an offer he just couldn't refuse. What he got was far worse. A bunch of drunk recruits looking for an easy target picked the lonely, amnesiac doctor out of the crowd and laid into him. He managed to shrug off most of it, none of it really bothered him. He couldn't remember anything worth getting so worked up over that he'd flip on them. It obviously bothered other patrons, though. Not surprising, the good folks of Riverside probably didn't like a lot of hoopla for no reason at all.

"Hey!" Someone yelled before things could get too violent, "Leave the guy alone!"

"Don't get your bell rung for my sake, kid." Leonard whispered, "I ain't worth the trouble." The recruits, smelling fresh meat, turned from Leonard and turned on the kid who'd told them to stop.

"Or else…what?" the big one, the ringleader, sneered at the kid. Leonard looked up to see which brave soul was standing up for a stranger who, on the best of days, was lucky to remember his own goddamn name let alone where he happened to be. He registered ruffled blonde hair with touches of auburn, intense blue eyes that at the moment were not smiling but usually did. He looked young, maybe a couple of years younger than Leonard, but tough, kinda rebellious.

"I don't know what your problem is, but I don't think he came in here looking for trouble." The kid stood up to the bully, chest-to-chest with him, "Back off, pal."

"Or else what? What're you gonna do, punk? Hit me?"

"Let me get this straight." The kid paced around the bully, "You're a Starfleet recruit, yes?"

"Yeah, so?"

"I wasn't aware that brawling with civilians was allowable by any standards set for the proper behavior of Starfleet's future officers. Let alone ganging up on a civilian who, from what I can see, never did or said a damn thing to any of you. Do I really have to call Captain Pike?"

"Who exactly do you think you are, blondie?" The ringleader sneered, apparently not impressed with the kid. Leonard sure was, it took real guts to stand up to somebody that big without blinking. That's when Leonard noticed what the kid was actually wearing. A slate-gray uniform with a vee-cut collar, Starfleet's Class A regulation duty-uniform for planetary personnel. The recruits wore the round-collar version in red. This kid was with Starfleet? A little young, wasn't he? Leonard subtly checked the kid's rank-stripes. Lieutenant. He wasn't even twenty-five and he was an officer? Well, Leonard had seen stranger things in his life. And if he thought about it, the kid was probably a Cadet Officer and not yet commissioned. Then why wasn't he wearing red? Did it really matter?

"Lieutenant James Tiberius Kirk. You answer to me, Cupcake. I say hands off the civilian, I mean it." Boy the kid knew his business, "I'm two seconds away from reporting every one of you to Captain Pike for conduct unbecoming Starfleet's future officers." Leonard looked at his aggressors, wondering if they'd take the kid seriously. Yeah he was young enough to be a recruit like them, but Leonard had the feeling the kid had earned his stripes the hard way. The big one, Cupcake, must have realized Kirk wasn't playing around and backed off. The others followed suit.

"That's what I thought." Kirk nodded and turned to Leonard with a smile, "Leonard H. McCoy?"

"Yeah?" How the hell did this kid know his name?

"Your wife called every recruiting office between Savannah and Denver. She wanted to make sure you were alright."

"My wife?"

"She said you probably wouldn't remember being married. Come on, I'll take you home." Kirk held out one hand in an invitation Leonard would be an idiot to refuse. The kid wasn't exactly recruiting officer material, but he'd sure made an offer worth taking. He shrugged and picked up his backpack, following the kid out of the bar. They passed an older man in a round-collar Class-A uniform, same slate-gray as Kirk's, it looked like he was waiting for something. This had to be Captain Pike, if Leonard had the stripes right.

"Well, Jim?"

"They're all yours, Captain. I found Doctor McCoy." Kirk looked at Leonard, who suspected this was the recruiting officer he'd been watching for. The captain gave Leonard a slow once-over that made him itch and nodded.

"Take him home and get him cleaned up, Jim, I'll see you kids in the morning."

"Sounds like a plan, sir." Kirk tossed off a quirky, lopsided salute that still passed muster, and ushered Leonard to a mint-condition classic car sitting in the parking-lot. It was the only one of it's kind in the lot, all of the other cars were hovers.

"Wow." Leonard rubbed the paint, fire-engine red, "Is this a Stingray 427?"

"Somebody knows their cars." Kirk smiled, "This baby's a '69 classic. Started working on her back in high-school, finished her a few years back. I'd come home on leave and work on her before Pike had her shipped out to San Francisco for me so I could work on her there." He got into the driver's seat and opened the door for Leonard, who got in. He'd seen these, and it was amazing he even remembered what kind of a car he was looking at. How many people could say they'd driven in a restored 1969 Corvette Stingray 427 Convertible? The drive was quiet, and he had absolutely no idea where Kirk was taking him until they reached a small, quaint house in Old Town. It looked cozy, homey, and all at once strange.

"So, this is home." Leonard got out of the car and stared at the house. Kirk took him inside and showed him where the guest-room was upstairs. It was obvious this house wasn't inhabited all the time, but it was still home. Leonard was grateful Kirk left him alone, but he kind of wished someone would ask him questions and talk to him. He fell asleep in tears that night, missing a family he couldn't remember. Kirk had him up at the crack of dawn, they ate breakfast in the kitchen, and after taking a shower, Kirk drove him back to the shipyard. Starfleet seemed like a safe place to start over, and that's where he was going. The shuttle was there, the recruits from last night were there, Captain Pike was there to make sure they all behaved themselves. Before they boarded the shuttle, Kirk grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to a halt.

"Hold it there."

"What? Ow! What the-?"

"That will keep the motion-sickness from making you want to hack." Kirk waved a spent hypo at him. Oddly grateful, Leonard shouldered his backpack and boarded the shuttle, looking for a place to sit.

"There's one back there." Kirk directed him to the back of the shuttle, "You'll be alright?"

"I hope so." He smiled bravely and tried to figure out the harness once he'd found his seat. Nobody bothered him, and he just listened to the steady chatter of conversations going on around him.

Jim Kirk kept looking over his shoulder as he prepped the shuttle for lift-off, he couldn't stop worrying about Doctor McCoy. What they knew about him wasn't promising. An accident a year ago had left him in a coma for six months and when he'd surfaced again, he had absolutely no memory at all of a good portion of his life. He remembered graduating from college and starting medical school, but that was all he remembered. He didn't remember getting married, or having a child, some days he barely remembered his own name. When Kathryn McCoy had called every single recruiting station between Savannah and Denver looking for her husband, who had left without leaving much more than a quick note, Jim had wondered why she thought he would come to Starfleet.

"Because it would be safe. No one would know him, it wouldn't matter." She had been in tears when she asked them to look out for her husband, to take care of him.

"Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"Go on back. He could probably use a friendly face for this trip." Christopher Pike knew exactly what he was thinking and smiled. Jim smiled back and headed for the seating areas. He found McCoy sitting alone, trying not to panic. Jim sat down and buckled his harness.

"How's it holding, Bones?"

"Where did you come from?"

"Pike sent me back. You need me more than he does." Jim smiled, "We'll get you to San Francisco in one piece, I promise."

"Do you have any idea how dangerous these things are?"

"I know how dangerous a shuttle is, try a starship." He chuckled, "Now there's a deathtrap."

"One pretty deathtrap, if you ask me." McCoy looked wistful. Jim smiled and took the man's hand in his, something he was actually allowed to do. Anyone else would have decked him, McCoy just held on as they launched.

When they got to San Francisco, Jim returned to classes and made Pike promise to take care of McCoy. Once they'd set down, the civilian was out of his hands. Things were okay for about a month before McCoy's teachers started to complain. He either didn't come to class or was disruptive when he did make it. Jim finally adjusted his own class-schedule to work around and with McCoy's. For the first few weeks to a month of this experiment, he sent McCoy text-reminders to make sure he got to class, sitting in the back row of the classes they shared and never once announcing himself to the troubled civilian GP. When another roommate was run off, Jim spoke to Pike and made sure they didn't try to pair him up with anyone else. Give him a few semesters to pull himself together before dumping some excitable greenback on his plate. The man had enough problems as it was, he didn't need roommates to make it worse.