A dusty road. A dry wind blows. A pervading heat. There is a town at the end of this road, how it still stands no one knows. There's not much. Houses, a few stores, a saloon. This is not a town for living in. It's a town for passing through, and that is what those stuck there claim they are doing.

"I'm not stayin' forever, this is just a convenient rest place."

"It's temporary you know? Just waitin' here 'til somethin' comes along."

They never leave.

Leonard McCoy once believed that he could escape. He strolled up to the town, cocky, confident, certain that he was better than everyone else there. He wouldn't be staying in this dump, he'd be gone in a few months. He told people as much. He was staying in the town because he didn't have anything better to do. But he'd be gone soon, you could be sure about that. People had muttered and rolled their eyes, but no one said anything.

Truth be told, he had been ordered out of the city by his wife's new (richer, more handsome, more connected) husband. Nothing was explicitly stated (no legal culpability), but he was a bit worried as to what would happen if he didn't obey him.

So he'd intended to lay low for a few months, before returning to the big city. The look in that man's eyes when Leo had turned up at the family home, where he used to live before she destroyed everything. He'd just wanted to see his baby girl. Alright, he may have had a few drinks beforehand, but that didn't matter. He was entitled!

Didn't seem to matter to them.

So he'd been warned off, told to get out of town if he didn't want anything to happen to his surgery: his life's work; his greatest achievement bar Joanna. What could he do? Looking back, he realised just how much of an idiot he'd been that night, turning up late at night smelling of drink and shouting for his daughter. What must Jo have thought? That was the turning point. The next morning he packed his bags, closed the surgery "temporarily" and kissed his mother goodbye, promising to write. Then he'd picked a direction and a road, and arrived at this god forsaken town.

This could be good for him, he'd thought. He needed a vacation after Joss and everything, he told himself. He'd been too stressed, he'd drank far too much, and look at where that had gotten him.

This was his chance to reinvent himself.

He hadn't seen the need to proclaim himself as a doctor. He hadn't seen the need to tell anything about himself. He found a bar, one of those stupid archetypal cowboy bars with the swinging saloon doors, and wangled his way into a job bartending. He'd done it at med school, when he needed money to court Joss and found he couldn't afford to go out drinking every night with her rich privileged friends it had become a necessity. The job came with an apartment above the bar, it was assumed he'd chuck out any drunks and lock up each night.

The owner, a Chris Pike, had fought in the Phillipine Insurrection, but had been wounded in the line of duty. He was in a wheelchair now, from an injury Leo was certain could have healed properly - allowing Pike to regain the use of his legs - if it hadn't been some incompetent field doctor treating him.

That stupid war. He'd been too young to fight at the time - not that he'd wanted to fight anyroad - but his father had been conscripted. A lot of men from his town had fought. They'd gone off to war, the children and the women waving them off.

Most of them never came back.

Those who had returned, including his father, had not been those laughing carefree men that left. His father could barely function, never mind hold a scalpel steady. Leo'd been a pacifist ever since, inspired to train as a doctor and follow in his fathers footsteps by the hope that he could help those forgotten by the government.

But no. He was stuck here, in this godforsaken town, working in this godforsaken bar, (Enterprise it was called. What kind of damn fool name was that?) and hoping against hope that he could somehow get out.

But then the news came that his surgery had burned down. His livelihood. That had been a hard blow. He'd spent the days in a drunken stupor until Pike had somehow managed to get up the stairs and told him to get over himself. He'd looked at Pike properly then, this man he'd disregarded as broken, and saw him clearly for the first time. Pike was a military man. He still kept fit, still held himself straight as an arrow, still kept his hair cut close to his head. Pike had made the best of what had happened. All Leo'd lost was a building. Pike had lost his legs.

He resigned himself to staying in the town ( He wasn't happy about it but he really did have nothing better to do now) and busied himself with getting to know the people in the town. Not hard, he was a bartender in a town of broken dreams, who else could people talk to? Even if it was a bartender that scowled, insulted and generally sent out a "Stay away from me" vibe. Drunk people would talk to anyone.

He watched them drink their sorrows away every night and thanked god he'd cut back on his drinking. He'd be fired if he got drunk at work anyway, that Pike was a hard ass.

Jim's father had been a hero. That was what everyone had said. Jim personally was a little jealous. His father had managed to avoid ever returning to this shitty town with it's shitty prejudiced DICKS. His father would never have to hear his mother sigh about how disappointed she was in him, his father would never see the glances sent at his son, the whispers.

"That's George Kirk's son. The poor mother, first her husband sacrifices himself, then the son grows up like that."

Granted, his father was dead and Jim was not jealous of that at all.

But he couldn't help wondering what it would be like if his father had never sacrificed himself to save all those people, if he'd taken the cowards way. Probably would have descended into drinking. Shouted all the time about how he could have saved people but instead he cared about his wife and newborn. Maybe not a very fun experience either.

Jim made the best of what he had, and dreamed of the day he could escape.

Sooo… I'm assuming most of the people reading this are aware of the fact it's going to have more than one chapter? I just haven't decided where it's gonna go yet :s