[Fic] zuben_eschamali: Palladium
[ RANDOM: Jared/Jensen ]
Title: Palladium
Writer: zuben_eschamali
Status of work: complete
Characters and/or pairings: Jared/Jensen, Chris, Aldis, Chad/Sophia
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, kinks & contents: [Click to read]mind control, mention of suicide attempt
Length: 64,263
Summary: Jared Padalecki was sixteen when Earth was invaded, shattering the world as he knew it. A year later, he was stunned when the leader of the human resistance, Jensen Ackles, was captured by the aliens, crushing the humans' last gasp of hope. Since then, Jared has made it his life's mission to rescue and restore Jensen, even if he never expects to get the chance to do either. But when that chance unexpectedly comes, Jared has to overcome the obstacles that he's put in his own way before he can work with his former hero, who's been a captive for years. If they can overcome the ways they've both been changed, they might be able to figure out a way to stop the invaders and maybe even save the world.
Reccer's notes: I've gone back and forth this month about whether to post a Big Bang rec because I loved quite a few and I couldn't rec them all. I picked this one based upon my mood today when I was reflecting on which of my favorites to rec. In general this story is just a TON of fun, but has great psychological and emotional tension. Jared and Jensen both read as genuine, acting and being described believably in the end. Also, as a material scientist I really loved the science here: well thought out and not hokey or trite (two common problems in "science" fiction, in my opinion), which is important to me when a story relies upon math and/or science for exposition.
[(Semi-)short excerpt]School was out, and he should have been hanging with Chad all summer before heading off to college. But all of the things they had planned to do seemed meaningless. They couldn't talk about what was really bothering them, so they ended up sniping at each other instead. Unfortunately, that only built up their frustration instead of easing it, and they spent less and less time together. Jared didn't see his best friend at all after the Fourth of July, which was a complete non-event for the second year in a row, since celebrating independence seemed like the most ludicrous idea imaginable.
Still, Jared couldn't get over that image: Jensen's strong, handsome features going blank and lifeless after they'd-what, injected him with something and applied an electrical stimulus? How could you do that to a human brain? How could you literally force someone to say the opposite of what they truly believed, and all in a matter of seconds?
He told himself that it was sheer curiosity that made him sign up for a neuroscience major when he entered college that fall. He said it was his drive to understand how the human brain worked and how it could be changed to cure mental illness when the Sl'kH interviewed him, as they did everyone signing up for one of the more sensitive subject areas. He tried to hide his revulsion at seeing one of them in person, and he thought he did a pretty good job, even if he couldn’t stop thinking about their tentacles holding down Jensen's body as they rearranged his brain.
But in the back of Jared's mind, way in the back where he rarely let it see the light of day, was his true reasoning: if someone's mind could be changed like that against their will, it could be changed back. And he was going to learn how to do that.
And he was going to rescue Jensen Ackles.