Work Text:
After Team Fortress'disbandment, all members went their separate ways.
Some went on to live as couples.
Others returned to their Homelands.
Others continued being Mercenaries, just without allegiance.
Not all got what they wanted.
Others did not change, if anything, they'd gotten worse.
Gabriele did not belong to any of these categories. He was a mix.
He'd returned to Naples.
He'd gotten a family, the thing he thanked God for most every Sunday in Church.
He'd gotten another job as a professor at a university, the Fredrick II. At times he loved it, at others he loathed it, but deep down, he loved and cared about all of his students, the interest they showed when he taught reminded him of his own when reading his first textbook, the spontaneous and quiet wonder when he stepped away, put down the chalk and observed his work and everything came together in a beautiful symphony of symbols, numbers and equations, each streak of white on black backdrop a testament to the beautifully complex nature of our Universe.
But, it seemed as though he was the only one to hear this melody.
Everyone else looked at his work and spat out laughter and insults.
"Madman!", he had been called, "Hellspawn!", he had been called, "Warlock!", he had been called by the foreigners. "Witch!" his mother had been called for assisting him.
He only wanted to help.
And Help his work did.
It saved his city, It Saved The South.
Yet, he was always the Madman.
to the eyes of his city, he was the rambling buffoon.
And he still was seen as that.
by everyone, but his wife, his son, and his students.
The Latter especially.
His class was made up of young prodigies like he himself had been.
He wanted the potential he saw in them to be celebrated, recognized as it deserved to be.
He wanted them to be seen as what they were.
Geniuses.
And he would fight to see that happen.
The constant arguments with the principal to keep his subject on the payroll were a testament to that.
So was the strive for funding,constant, but rewarding in the end.
He wanted to give what he hadn't been given.
For, history is not fated to repeat itself.
It's only when the people with the power to act don't that civilization does not stride forward.