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The cuts on his body burn and he feels the rush of adrenaline as the shimmer pulses through his veins. There's a moment of hesitation as he grips the blade in his hand. What if it kills him. No time for those thoughts, he's already too deep. Viktor slices through the skin of his palm and thrusts it towards the hungry, wanting Hexcore.
He convulses on contact. The shimmer burns hotter as it counteracts the destructive forces acting on his body. He should be dying. He should be nothing but dust. Instead he feels the power seep into his bones, his muscles… his mind.
It's almost as if there is a consciousness to the Hexcore. A being of pure energy. It thinks! Viktor would be ecstatic about being correct if he weren't currently being fried like a fish.
Finally, the energy releases and Viktor falls to the floor. Oh god, what has it done to his leg. He stares at it in horror. What has he done?
Suddenly, a voice.
“Damn, dude! You did all this yourself!?”
What the fuck.
Viktor looks around frantically for the source of the voice. There's no one else in the lab. He locked the doors. How did anyone (especially someone who sounds like they belong in a fraternity) get inside?
“Shows over. Come out where I can see you”, Viktor says, trying his best to hide the shake in his voice.
“No can do, my guy. Noncorporeal being. Got no body to show off, but trust if I did have one it’d be absolutely rocking.”
He was hallucinating. That was the logical conclusion. The shimmer, or the Hexcore, or the trauma of it all is causing auditory hallucinations.
The voice makes a bad impressions of a buzzer, “Eeeh! Wrong. I'm the Hexcore, dude! You literally invited me here.”
“You are… the Hexcore?” Viktor pulls himself up using the desk. His leg feels fantastic. Not an ache or pain to be felt. He wonders if he could even run on it.
“Mhm. And yeah, you totally can run on that thing btw. That's some pretty solid work you did. Method was kinda freaky, but whatever floats your boat.”
Viktor laughs at the insanity of it all. Oh, how on earth was he going to explain this to Jayce. Probably best not to tell him at all. “Okay, Mr. Hexcore. Let's go test that theory.”
-
The disembodied voice was less temporary than Viktor would have liked. It was around all hours of the day to give him it's strange opinions and requests. Evidently it had never had a body before and wanted to borrow Viktor's to experience things like... cardio... and house parties. He was even starting the think it really was the Hexcore, despite the strange personality. It would overtake his mind at moments. He once found himself stopping by a bar after work and chatting up some men about some sports team. The second he left the building the odd cloud over his mind lifted and he was left wondering why the fuck he had done that. And how had he known they won 5-10? Viktor never even knew the names of Piltover's teams until now.
When he got home he sat on his bed and confronted the entity he apparently now shared a head with. “Did you do that? Did you take control of my body?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah, that was me. Are you upset about that?”
Viktor scoffs, “Yes, I am upset about that. You cannot just steal my body whenever you like!”
“Ah shit, sorry man. I swear I’ll give you a heads up next time.”
“I would prefer if that wasn’t a next time, but fine, a warning is the least you can.”
-
The Hexcore stuck to its word, for the most part. It never took Viktor’s body from him without warning or permission. Unfortunately, it didn't always take no for an answer, but for the most part its desires were harmless. Only once did he get truly mad at it for what it did.
Viktor’s feelings about Jayce at the moment are… complicated. He had loved the man, but lately he has been cruel. He knows Jayce thinks he is doing what’s best, but Viktor had not expected him to be so easily turned against the people he had told Vitkor they would help. How quickly he had turned against everything Viktor stood for.
Viktor is angry. That is the simplest way to put it.
And the Hexcore knew he was angry, just as it knew all of Viktor’s thoughts. So, one day in the lab, as he and Jayce worked in tense silence, Viktor felt the hold of the Hexcore taking over. He didn’t even have time to tell it to stop before it had it’s claws in him.
It ripped Jayce a new one. Everything Viktor had shoved down and put to the side, the Hexcore unearthed and vocalized without his permission. Everything. The fucker even added in that little “I loved you” bit. The Hexcore stormed out of the lab and brought them back to Viktor’s apartment. When Viktor came to, he was absolutely mortified.
“Why- Why would you do that?” Viktor runs a hand through his hair and paces the living room in a panic. “You’ve ruined everything. Oh my god, you’ve ruined it.”
He feels the metaphorical hands of the Hexcore come up and squish his metaphorical face. “Hey, Hey look at me man. It’s gonna be fine. I can see everything remember? He needed to hear it to get his head out of his ass. It’s all cool.”
Viktor doesn’t believe it. He connects to the Hexcore further to find Jayce. To get a forewarning for what would face him later. To his surprise he sees the outside of his apartment.
“Oh god”, He says outloud. The Hexcore goes silent, but Viktor can feel its anticipation. The tricky bastard.
Jayce knocks on his door a moment later and Viktor wants to throw himself out a window. They talk. Viktor lets Jayce apologize and flounder before admitting his situation with the Hexcore and why he had gone off on him seemingly out of nowhere. Even though the confession was a massive breach of his privacy, it had happened, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Worst of all, the Hexcore was right. It was exactly what Jayce needed to hear. Over the next few weeks Jayce angled further towards wanting peace, and solidified his “no hextech weapons” stance. He was still under the influence of the Council, but he was more like the Jayce Viktor knew that he had been in a while.
And they… may have slept together, just casually. For now. But that's neither here nor there, despite what the Hexcore thinks.
“Viktor and Jayce sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G”, It sings to him.
“I am literally begging you to stop”, Viktor says with his face in his hands.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over how good I am at wingmanning.”
He considered destroying the Hexcore that day. It laughed at him for even thinking he could. They were too deeply bound together now, for better or worse. Good thing it wasn’t evil.