I'm struggling to fall asleep and keep thinking about that necromancer McCoy fanart I saw a little while ago. It's mixing with espressohno's Betazoid Bones AU that's been swirling around my head for the last week and my own research for my voodoo!Bones AU that I wrote a few years back.
So, what if Leonard is half Betazoid so he has greater telepathic and psionic powers compared to the average human but he was raised in a household with a mixture of religions, a bit of Christianity, some Georgia hoodoo, and some Louisiana voodoo?
Perhaps, he has a grandparent who embraced their distant Samedi bloodline, one that faintly runs through his own veins. Perhaps, in his desperation to save his father and spiralling into alcoholism, Bones opens a door which he cannot close and, with his heightened psionic powers, he comes to realize that there's a reason why Gam's hoodoo never worked half as well for him. He's stupid in a way a 20-somenshpuldnt be anymore and his world crashing down around him and he realizes.
So when Vulcan caves in, he finds he doesn't even need an altar for what feels like half of Vulcan That Was to flood his brain. He begins to dream of ancestors, imagines he can hear a deep, smoothly inviting voice that tastes like fear and feels like chocolate mousse.
So, when Jim is dead he's dead dying, he pulls on his friend's soul and corrals it until he can heal the flesh enough to put it back. At first life isn't so different. He can feel the darkness in the souls of the living more easily - can interpret the stain of sin at a glance.
And when Scotty and Chekov pull out a ouija board one night during an off shore party, he hastily excuses himself or be possessed just from watching. He feels something -someone - tugging. Then pulling moro harshly. Whatever it is nearly rips him free from reality and slides into his place. He's cold for days, feels that thing lurking, a presence that restlessly paces and salivates at the thought of taking control of his body.The feeling when he steps off the road and onto the drive that signals the beginning of the family farm is stronger than anything he's ever felt. The world whirls and tips and rights itself so quickly he doesn't even have time to feel sick. But more than that is the rush, the physical flush of an endorphin high as the weight of the devil that clung to his back and wound through his hair dissolves and he sees his mama step out onto the porch.
Leonard calls his mother for advice and discreetly places miniature protection spells around the ship.
The pressure builds, the thing plays conquering warlord, lays siege, and begins murmuring in his car, flashing in the corner of his eye, and presses it's claws against his skin. When he wakes up to bruises on his upper arms and parallels scratches on his thighs and calves, he can't put it off any longer, can't live in the sands of denial he'd been burying his head in for years.
He files emergency leave and takes 3 ships across 3 galaxies to get home.
The feeling doesn't last long, though. He'd known, in that vague way that barely remembered moments of childhood does, that he'd never known a grandparent and then lost touch with a cousin who had turned towards evil. Now he knew how and why with the soul deep horror of an adult reflecting on their own awful actions.
So, when Spock decides to aim for the "Most Likely To Die In The Immediate Future" trophy, Leonard knows exactly what he's risking, what Baron Samedi could take for payment as he gathers power he shouldn't have in order to do something he shouldn't be able to do.
Of course this fic would have lovely world building with hoodoo and voodoo culture. And then maybe something about a rumor eventually spreading after Uhura makes a comment about how him anticipating the needs of and saving a redshirt reminds her of the vodoun in Africa. So then Bones becomes less about doctoring and more about necromancy, regardless of the fact that Leonard doesn't even seem to have any religious paraphernalia. And definitely some scenes where Samedi makes Leonard hallucinate then his mama and gam cooking up the hoodoo for the ship and him basking in the familiar energy rising off the items when he unpacks them in his quarters.
And of course all of the bits about how he masters his innate talents in death magic and exploring his Betazoid abilities alongside his voodoo ones and channeling them into his chosen profession of healing and idk maybe if we're feeling indulgent he can have a little ghostie companion like a Disney princess.
Anyway, I also keep thinking about Baron Samedi whispering tempting things in Fon and Benin/African French and calling him woaka which Leonard doesn't understand until he looks it up and learns that he's being called skeleton in Fon. Cue disgust over the twisting of Jim's nickname.
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