Huldufólk
Summary:
Two years after the war with BPO, Leon and Genevieve had grown tired of hiding. Hiding from the world, from themselves… From each other.
Huldufólk: (Icelandic and Faroese) hidden people, from huldu- "pertaining to secrecy" and fólk "people", "folk".
A/N:
Look who's back and ready to tackle the complicated mess of a world that is Veracity Verse!
I'm keeping the universe open as a canon-divergent AU series, for those of you who are interested. I am open to prompts and suggestions, and I can write about canon characters and/or my OCs, so long as they are compliant with Veracity's storyline.
A big thank you to my friend Gen (andguinevere on tumblr), without whom Veracity wouldn't have been made possible. This was your prompt and something you've been (very patiently) waiting for, so I hope you like this fic.
For those of you who haven't read "Veracity", a.k.a. Part 1 of my "Veracity Verse" series, you might wanna go do that. I won't force you, but this fic will make a lot more sense once you do.
Warning: MAJOR Veracity spoiler.
"In Iceland, there are small people, like elves, who live in the land. When I was young, I went into a cave and I heard one singing. She was singing a song my mother used to sing to me when I was young. It's quite a terrible song about a mother having to kill her baby, but I always found it so comforting.
"I heard her voice several times over the years. She told me I was born with a hex, and that if I stayed in Iceland, bad things would happen to me, and to the people that I loved. And then my mother died, and I believed it was my fault."
— Riley Blue, from S01E06, "Demons"
Chapter 1: Genevieve
They call themselves the Hidden People.
Members of the Archipelago—and all who had found themselves voluntarily or inevitably tangled up in this struggle for survival—had adopted the title from the Icelandic legend. It was fitting because no one believed in their existence. Because they had to fight a silent battle while the Sapien world watched on, oblivious to their fear.
Sometimes Genevieve wondered if the title served as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Most of the Sensates she met flinched at the sight of her camera. Others stared at the lens with blank expressions, piecing together how they could best collect themselves to appear inconspicuous. Genevieve could hear it in their minds, the wariness of being documented, the warnings from members of their Cluster. What if it's a trap? They thought. What if she's not who she says she is?
Frustrations about her final photography project aside, Genevieve understood these people's fear. BPO may have vanished, but ideas could not. And somewhere, out there, people were still trying to find ways to eliminate her kind.
In the end, she'd managed to put together a portfolio before the deadline: eighty-eight photos in honor of the August 8th Cluster. She used her old works as starting points, photos taken as early as four years ago when she and her Cluster-mates had first established their safe house in Paris. The first photo she ever took in Paris was one of Damien and his mother. It was one of her most cherished photos, one she was unwilling to display.
It seemed ironic that she was contributing to the hidden-ness of the very people she was trying to unveil.
The collection, Huldufólk, proved to be a success. Judges from all over Europe came and admired her work. The recent photo of Amélie and her maman at the Sensorium Children Shelter was the centerpiece of the installation—they'd agreed to be photographed on the porch of the shelter, their shared strawberry ice cream cone dripping in their clutches as they sat on the front steps. Behind the photo, all the crisscrossing red strings overlapped, connecting the other Hidden People lined up around the inter-web to the small but apparently loving family.
The same cork board and the same strings Henrik once used to track down the missing Blocker traders.
"Why them?" Niels, her mentor, had asked when she'd shown him the finalized collection two weeks before. "Why the mother and child? What's their secret?"
Without realizing, Genevieve had removed her consciousness from her body and drifted over to where Leon was visiting, standing behind her in her mentor's office. Leon turned to her with a wink and smudge of green paint on his cheek and chuckled in response to her silent question as he spun his paintbrush deftly between his fingers. Wouldn't you like to know? Leon thought, winking.
"It's not my place to tell," Genevieve said.
Her eyes darted back to meet Leon's. She didn't know what she was seeking, but when he looked back at her, she heard his mind echoing the same words.
Niels frowned as he re-examined the photo of the mother-and-child, paying particular attention to the melting ice cream. A smile betrayed him, finally, when his eyes traveled over to the little girl's grin.
"I suppose everyone knows something no one ever suspects." Niels handed back all her photos in the folder with an approving nod. "But a photography collection doesn't end with the photos themselves. Think about how you want to set this up in the exhibition. Think about the installation—the presentation matters as much as the content itself. What kind of story are you going to tell?"
"A story only they know." She nodded at her folder, at the people inside. "A story others can't begin to fathom, save for bits and pieces."
On the day of the exhibition, the visitors marveled over the people, the Sensates, Genevieve showcased: some were photographed cooking in the kitchen of the Paris safe house, some in the middle of an animated discussion regarding their freedom, some waving from the opposite side of the street in a remote location most maps couldn't name…
She'd spent the past two years of her academic career traveling and searching for her old connections, updating their old photos with ones that reflect their newfound but still hidden life. It only occurred to her, as she was putting up her board, that the people in her photographs were the ones who'd found her. But to everyone else, they looked like photos. Normal photos. Photos of just… people.
These blokes aren't the only one with secrets, are they? Leon thought, peeking at her from behind the cork board, his expression somewhere between "brooding" and "proud".
We're one to talk, she quipped back.
Leon walked out from behind the board and circled around her, pretending to scrutinize her. Who'd have thought this innocent Irish girl turned out to be a killer?
She smirked. Who'd have thought the big dopey bloke in the Hawaiian shirt is capable of the same?
He walked out from behind the board and brought up memories of the night they chased down the BPO vans on the streets of London with Nomi and the others, the night they shot every guard and Hazsuit in sight. Hmm. We'd do well as renegades.
On the other side of Amsterdam, Gina flinched at the memory from the night they lost Henrik, and the next thing Genevieve knew, Leon had disappeared from view with nothing more than a silent apology.
Genevieve sighed and turned to the judges who were passing by her installation, putting on a smile like the ones her old friends put on for the sake of the photos, forcing the brimming tears back into her eyes. They shook her hands and congratulated her, and, after scrutinizing the photos one more time, asked about her inspiration.
"Why these people?" someone asked. "How are they connected?
"They look like they could have been anyone," another said.
She told them sometimes, it's people in plain sight that hide the most about themselves.
The judges' lingering presence at Genevieve's exhibit made the other visitors stop in their tracks. They came over to try and analyze her work, hoping to impress her with how much hidden depth they could uncover from the photographs alone, concluding underwhelming half-truths from her bits and pieces.
They wondered why the little girl had only a mother, but couldn't guess the real reason her father was no longer here.