"Vertigo: No Way Up" by Kielle (PG-13)

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

Fandom: X-Men Comicverse
Pairing: None
Author on LJ: Tragically, the author, Kielle, died last September, of cancer. Her original LJ has not been deleted; it was kielle.
Author Website: Subreality (to find her fiction, go to the subpage Camelot, which features all the fan fiction she and her husband Chris, aka "Laersyn", wrote)
Why this must be read: It created fanon that had a permanent effect on X-Men comic fandom, it is utterly original, and it is a damn good read.


First of all, I am such a scrub.

I was assigned to drive the Crack Van for X-Men Comicverse this month, and then my computer died, thus I lost the email informing me of this fact. I managed to completely forget about it until about a week ago or so, and have been too busy with work and doctor's appointments to do any recs.

And yet I have so many recs to make! Arrgh! Only three days!

Since I usually *get* my Crack Van recs by going back through the memories, I am going to do twelve recs in three days so they can at least be logged to memories, and I apologize to anyone who has this journal friended and really doesn't like X-Men Comicverse.

Now, on to the rec.

In "No Way Up" Kielle took an excessively minor supervillain, Vertigo, who was one of the weaker members of a team of mercenary assassins (the Marauders) that fans generally paid little attention to except as cardboard cutouts, and made her real. I don't know if the idea that the Marauders are constantly being cloned and brought back in new bodies every time they die was actual comic canon, or fanon invented to explain why we saw people come back who had died on panel (these things happen in comic books), but whichever, Kielle ran with it to create a suspenseful story that explores issues of identity and gives personalities and depth to characters no one had really worked with before.




There was a tap-tap-tap on the door behind her, right next to her ear. She pushed herself off of the warped wood and turned, backing away, fists and teeth clenched. A moment later the door creaked open and a slab-cheeked face peered out at her from somewhere near the ceiling. "Hey there."

Vertigo grunted wordlessly and turned away, folding her arms over her chest. She heard the door close and the boards underfoot creaked ominously. Something rustled by her shoulder -- she glanced over involuntarily. A ragged sheaf of magazine pages. She caught herself reaching for them and jerked her hand back, stuffing it under her other arm, turning her back. "Don't need 'em."

"I know. But you want 'em."

She picked a stain on the far wall and scowled at it. "NO, I DON'T. Not any more. They're ruined. It's ruined. It's just a stupid magazine anyway. I can get another one."

"It's the principle of the the thing, though, huh?" Blockbuster's big gravelly voice was remarkably quiet, for once. Some of the dumb-hick slurring he'd been putting on for laughs was gone; the slight German accent he'd picked up as a young merc in Europe was more noticible.

She whirled on him, lashing out at the nearest target. "What do you care? Who put you up to this? I don't need your sympathy! Fuck off! Leave me alone! I'll -- look, it's nothing. Nothing at all. The usual. Who cares."

He said nothing. The silence dragged out and began to unnerve her. To fill the dead air, she started pacing and grumbling. "What the hell are we doing in Paris anyway? What are we HERE for?"

"That's not our business," Blockbuster rumbled. "So long as HE needs us to kill sumthin' for him, that's good enough."

"Yeah sure. 'Good enough.'" She stopped and poked him in the chest with one finger. "We just settle for whatever he throws our way, don't we? Isn't...isn't there anything else?"

"Hey, what more do we need?" Then he squinted sharply down at her. "Are you okay? Hold on, you ain't gettin' second thoughts, are you?"

"No...! Don't be ridiculous." She sighed heavily, suddenly dead serious. "I'm just...I'm bored, okay? What else IS there, Mike? I mean...there's more out there, right?"

Blockbuster was taken aback. He studied his teammate carefully from his vantage point about a foot above her unruly green-and-silver head. "Whaddya mean? I don't get--"

"You have a name. You had a family...well, parents at least. You WERE someone else. Before Sinister. You remember...other things," she said intensely.

"Uh? A little. I guess." He shrugged, suddenly uneasy with the turn the conversation was taking. He'd gotten out of the habit of thinking, period. To suddenly be confronted with these questions from Vertigo, the team's "know-nothing airhead"... "Vee, what's gotten into you?"

She retreated a step, her expression suddenly guarded. She turned away to face the far wall again. "Nothing, I guess. Maybe I'm just homesick or something. I dunno. Never mind."

Blockbuster thought for a moment and then patted her carefully on the shoulder -- "carefully" in his case meaning "not quite enough to knock her flat on her face." "Homesick, huh?" he asked her with exaggerated cheerfulness. "No worries. We'll be back in N'York within the week. Um...y'mind if I get back to the game now?" he added rather lamely.

"Go ahead," she replied, her tone wooden. Her hands had crept up to clasp her elbows. Blockbuster hesitated, but this really wasn't his forte. He gave her shoulder a clumsy squeeze and beat a retreat back into the abandoned apartment...back to uncomplicated company, to crude conversation that made sense.

"Homesick, yeah," she murmured as the door creaked shut behind him. "But not for New York."



Vertigo: No Way Up

Comments

[thenyxie.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to hear about Kielle. Damn. I had no idea. We weren't close, but I knew her briefly, long ago, and I definitely know her work.

And, I'm SO glad you included this! (Yes, I'm catching up on recs for the month). Once I saw you were reccing I decided to scroll back and see if you'd included this one, because it's truly one of the most amazing fics I ever have read, even still to this day.