But the day will come when we all,

Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao ciao

But the day will come when we all

Will work in freedom!

-The Mondina's Bella Ciao

Giuseppe Garibaldi was.

Well, the original man also was in a slightly different sense, but Giuseppe wasn't like him quite yet.

She was alive, and the moment she realized that was the same moment she was suddenly slammed with a load of historical context. Who she was, where she was, the long chain of historical events that led to her standing on the bridge of a boat named Giuseppe Garibaldi while also being named Giuseppe Garibaldi.

She took a quick look at her surroundings. A few men in military dress stood before her, smiling and murmuring to each other. They were staring.

Her clothes were simple. You could even call them plain. Simple white pants, a green sash tied tight around her waist in place of a belt, and a red shirt to top it off. Italian colors, she thought.

She was Italian. Well, Socialist Italian, if they were splitting hairs (and peninsulas), but her name referred to the man who had unified the peninsula. Well, perhaps that was a little great-man history of her, considering she was part of a Syndicalist navy.

She was an inheritor of something great. Something big. Well, Garibaldi liked to think she was pretty swell all on her lonesome, but she was part of a team. Part of the Ferruccio class– hey, she had at least a sister waiting for her, that was pretty nice– and part of the Italian navy and part of the grand collection of ships who fought for the rights of the common workingman…

Bleh. She couldn't even finish a sentence like that in her head. Like, sure she got that helping people was important, but if they asked her to understand actual Syndicalist policy that was a whole different ballgame. Thank God her job wasn't understanding political theory.

Speaking of getting lost… it seemed she had been lost in her thoughts for a hot minute there. A couple of the officers were staring at her funny, and she couldn't stand around like an idiot forever:

"Light cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi, here! Pleased to meet you, pleased to fight with you, you know the drill." She grinned.

"Ah, yes…" someone stepped forwardly hesitantly. "We're glad to meet you, Miss."

"And I'm pretty glad to be alive," she grinned, taking a few hesitant steps before speeding up, making a brief circle around the officer, observing him.

"Ma'am?"

"Just getting a look at you, is all." She smiled. "You're pretty good-looking, although I'm afraid I don't have much of a sample size to compare to."

A few of the officers cleared their throats awkwardly. "Well," one of them sighed, "At least the ship is finally..."

Thankfully, they didn't keep her from her sister for too long. She and the illustrious Francesco Ferruccio were to share a room together, and their officers were glad to leave her to another shipgirl so that she might learn their strange, womanly ways from a proper source.

The way they acted, you'd almost think they were afraid of her, or something. And not even in a fun intimidating way, but rather in a lame sort of 'I shouldn't be seen as improper' sort of way. Wasn't like Giuseppe was going to take any offense; she was the one being forward, it was only fair to expect some turnabout. You'd think a syndicalist would know how to take a stick out of their ass…

But maybe they had to wait until they liberated the whole world before the stick could removed. Country to defend, and all that. Yeah, Giuseppe got that, that was her whole deal, but she figured they could live a little in the meantime, you know? Who even knew if the revolution was going to finish off in their lifetimes? Didn't the capitalists kind of have you, if you were living in fear of them, constantly plotting and scheming and working around them?

Eh, whatever. Maybe it wasn't properly revolutionary of her to think of this whole deal as like, a job she clocked into or whatever, but that was what it was to Giuseppe. She'd do it as best she could, but living entirely for combat? Come on, she wasn't a machine.

…. Okay, that was a bit funny coming from a literal warship, but it was true. Her sister ship was more than just a similar design, she had a gut feeling that she was her flesh and blood sister. Maybe she'd be the cool big sibling type? They were hers, whoever they were.

She opened the door to their room, and the first thing Giuseppe noticed were the slashes. Not anywhere on her sister though, other than her clothes. It wasn't even some clothing malfunction: her shirt just looked like it had been loaned from a condottiere. Vivid reds and whites to rival Giuseppe's outfit, with puffing and slashes and even an honest-to-goodness cuirass hanging in the corner.

"Ferruccio!" Giuseppe grinned.

Her sister looked up from a book. Must have been some book if she was so engaged she couldn't see Giuseppe's arrival… or maybe she wasn't allowed to see it in the first place. "Giuseppe. I'm pleased to meet you, sister."

"Charmed." Giuseppe ignored the offer of a handshake and went for a hug. Ferruccio made a sort of surprised noise before very hesitantly wrapping her arms around Giuseppe. Her right arm was cold even through Giuseppe's shirt.

"Giuseppe…"

"What? We're sisters, I'll remind you."

"You should mind your image." Oh boy.

"Who's here to see our image?" Plus, how could Miss Condiotteri get on a high horse about appearances? Sure, there was a certain bombastic charm to the outfit, but what use was there worrying about stupid formalities when the immediate hurdle was not looking like you were looking to hire out a thousand fighting men to the Pope?

Ferruccio released Giuseppe and took a seat on her bed. Now that she had a good look at it, Giuseppe could see that her sister's right arm was metal. Not like a gauntlet or glove, unless it sat so close to the skin as to practically be a second layer… and then there were the fingers, which had obvious joints. Yet at the same time, it flexed and moved like the real thing, moving a book to the side with delicate care.

Giuseppe plopped herself down across from Ferruccio and just stared. The delicate mechanism of the hand, the smallest hint of blue in the red eyes. If you looked closely, you could spot the Florentine giglio, a stylized iris for the flowering city. Her namesake had died attempting to preserve that republic before it fell under tyranny.

Was it a more reasonable precedent than simply being named for Tuscany? You could live up to a region's ideals, but you couldn't be weighed against the whole thing, could you? How could you compare a person against a plot of country and all the people contained therein?

But a person? Being named after a person was much stronger. More decisive. They were a measuring stick, and considering they were important enough to have a ship named after them, the shipgirl would usually fall short. Her sister would be weighed against that brilliant warrior, that martyr, and unless Giuseppe singlehandedly engineered the collapse of the Two Sicilies, her name would always be a little funny.

Well, that supposed she wanted to live up to the man. Sure, she had his name, but how many, say, carpenters or clerks were out there carrying the name Giuseppe? Not like all of them could rise up that far. It was rather hard to replicate. Giuseppe Garibaldi was the man who made Italy…

Don't get Giuseppe wrong: she loved her sister, loved her enough to wish that she was just a bit less zealous about the whole 'instituting worldwide Syndicalism' thing. Like she knew on a grand scale that a lack of hard work would mean death and tragedy– and Giuseppe did want to avoid that– but they weren't just… means of achieving a revolutionary end. Funny how Ferruccio considered herself some grand representative for the common workingman but wouldn't even exploit the breaks and privileges their regime gave them.

(The idea that bounced around in Giuseppe's head was noblesse oblige. Ferruccio didn't just work herself down to the bone, she worked down through that metal hand of hers… Maybe Italy wouldn't be in the spot it was now if their old nobility had half her sister's strength of character.)

Giuseppe might not have cared all that much for the specifics of Syndicalist policies, but making bonds with her comrades? Forming a cohesive fighting unit? That sort of stuff was right up her alley.

Her current target for the day was Miss Piemonte. Her namesake had kicked around in the region for a bit and had eventually helped its sovereigns rise to rule over all Italy. Piemonte was, unusually for a girl in the Socialist Navy, almost completely lacking in red barring the eyes. Otherwise, her colors were white and blue, accompanying a cool temper and generous attitude.

Do you know how hard it is to get good tea these days? No more big British domains and crippled international trade… at best, there was Assam and such from the communes around Bengal. One of the harder selling points of revolutionary Syndicalism was less luxury goods, unfortunately.

But hey, that wasn't why you threw a party, not really. Piemonte could whip up a killer pannacotta, sure, but the point of it was the pleasant company. Pleasant, if slightly overbearing at times.

"I'm just concerned, you know?" Piemonte sighed. Giuseppe definitely knew. "Poor Nicoloso is going to get herself in serious trouble if she keeps on wandering as she pleases…"

Their little navigator had a bad habit of plotting courses that brought her dangerously close to diplomatic incidents, and while some people might have been up for it, most weren't ready for the civil war to come back to life. Sure, northern Italy had flourished in the meantime, but there were still scars and wounds that had not yet healed.

(Shipgirls in the SRI had a private holiday of their own: Dante's Day. The first of their sort, the first Italian shipgirl, martyred before she could join the Syndicalists. Her grasp of poetry, her unabashed love of man… the older ships and officers sung her praises. For a while, the Socialist Republic of Italy bore the shame of having no real capital ships to take her place.)

"I suppose I understand the sentiment," Giuseppe replied. "There's only so much of base a girl can stand."

"Do you have a potential cure for this issue of hers?"

"I think we should let her out on the town."

Piemonte smiled. "Would that help her, or would that help you?"

"Can't it do both?" Giuseppe asked. "We're independent Syndicalist women, aren't we? Shouldn't we be talking with the common man all the time, not just during pre-arranged meetings?"

"There are a lot of hardworking people I would like to thank…" Piemonte mused. "I'll see if I can ask someone." Asking someone didn't necessarily mean much. Their republic was red down to the tape, if you caught Giuseppe's drift.

"I think you could get Ferruccio onboard if you were smart about it. Pitch it as a chance for us to connect with the workers… and mention mountaineering."

"Mountaineering?"

"Yeah. Her half of the room is plastered with pictures of the Alps." Some were just the mountains, in all their splendid desolation, but others had people. The new generation of Syndicalist athletes who conquered the slopes… Verso l'alto was her sister's sort of phrase.

"I'm glad you and your sister are getting along."

"Something like it." Giuseppe went for a piece of pannacotta and saw a frown forming on Piemonte's face. No. Come on.

"Are you two having issues?" Piemonte frowned. Giuseppe could have groaned.

How to put it, how to put it… "She works way too hard and makes it everybody's problem."

"Perhaps I could talk to her about her work habits." Piemonte smiled.

"I don't know how that'll go," Giuseppe warned. "Every distraction is like… well, it's a setback to the effort, you know? Even mountaineering is exercise and improving camaraderie, right? It's like she's never going to take a break until Italy is…"

Getting along with other ships was usually pretty easy. They had shared experiences and all that sort of thing, the more interesting problem was the matter of her normal crew. A life outside of military regulation… wasn't that interesting? In theory, that was her end goal: making warships obsolete and settling into normal life.

(Would she get a pension out of this? She hoped so.)

Unfortunately, while her outfit was a little less bizarre than what her sister typically wore, she still stuck out like a sore thumb. Green hair turning to black near the ends? It was absurd. Lucky Ferruccio had a more reasonable shade, but she didn't seize upon it to go out with the crew. Her loss. One day, Giuseppe would drag her sister to town…

But reconnaissance before a confrontation was how a cruiser such as herself did things. She slipped her hair under a (fortunately) fashionable little cap that was provided to her, and went to town arm in arm with one of her crew members. She was important, after all, and while the thought of wandering town was nice, the thought of having to be rescued by local police was just embarrassing. Having a charming young gentleman escort her was a great way to go about it, in her opinion.

Oh, the town was brilliant. The vague idea of a Syndicalist revolution was nice, but the idea of earning herself a spot in a town like this was concrete. A country of true freedmen, beyond the shackles of capital… oh damnit, Ferruccio had gotten in her head again.

The boy– his name was Teresio– seemed pretty proud of himself, showing her every little street and shop. It was where he grew up, apparently, so she had a remarkably good tour guide, for the low, low price of looking like she was more than just a simple friend. (Hey, kid wasn't bad or anything.)

It was refreshing, having people greeting her without the looming shadow of a warship on their minds. She smiled and grinned: "My name is Giuseppina. It's a pleasure to meet you!"

Joseph was a strange name for a woman, Josephine was not. Such is life, she supposed. In theory, she could go by her full name and refer to the ship in the harbor– their existence wasn't a secret anymore– but being free from the navy's rules was just so refreshing.

She could watch as Teresio's family made jokes about him finally finding a girl while they were on break from their work in carpentry. She could walk down Giuseppe Garibaldi Street, she and Teresio chuckling at their private joke. From the right vantage point, you could see new buildings going up, the swooping curves and strong designs of the new Syndicalist style, yet you could also marvel at the old, places so ancient they were there before old Francesco Ferruccio was a gleam in his papa's eye.

They came before a church– which still existed and were still attended, even if the government had instituted new restrictions on the clergy– and Teresio stopped for a moment before shaking his head.

"What's the matter?" Giuseppe asked.

"We shouldn't."

"Why not?'

"If you were to take off your hat…" he trailed off. Perhaps that was the respectful thing to do when entering a church, but it would definitely blow her cover if there was anyone inside.

Having to take off her hat when she entered a church was a strange bit of manners that she was expected to follow… but the hat was also strange, in its own way. She shouldn't have to wear it if people just treated her normally, and they would never treat her normally if they didn't get exposure. And if she caused a hubbub? Well, she had quite a bit of exploring done already.

She took off her hat and walked inside. It was… well, it wasn't like Saint Peter's down in Rome, from what she had heard, but it was inarguably different from everything she had ever known. Not necessarily a good difference– her namesake was notably anti-clerical– but it was a part of Italy, even if their government didn't like it.

Even as a total laywoman, she could admit the art was nice. More than nice, even. "I'll be damned…"

Teresio cleared his throat and Giuseppe chuckled. Right, right. She could hear some muttering behind her, but she didn't mind it too terribly. Brushing a stray lock of hair away, she could get a good look at the art:

One painting depicted a group of men. Well, most paintings in the church tended to do that, but two men were the particular focus of this piece. A blind man in rags almost seemed to stumble forward, desperately reaching out… and a man who was presumably Jesus. Big halo, vaguely similar features to the unfortunate bloke hanging at the far end of the church. Some text curled under the scene, which she took brief note of before turning.

A few carefully painted statues depicted a woman crushing a serpent's head with her foot, or a man holding a flowering rod and a carpenter's square. It was, according to the radical Syndicalist line, backward superstition. Yet other politicians passionately argued that Syndicalism was Christlike. Holy.

Unfortunately, her removal of the cap caused some of the excitement that had been feared, and they had to leave a bit early. She was, at the very least, a bit closer to understanding the enigma of the modern Italian man; however, she also found herself a bit closer to the ancient Italian man.

Who knew she could read Latin? Giuseppe certainly didn't. Had the officer that made her known it? She had heard some of the crazier radical Syndicalists talk about unifying free Europe under the Latin language so that all men might know the sweet fruit of international brotherhood… or something like that. Was that why Latin was planted in her head? Or perhaps a shipwright or a designer knew that language.

Whatever the reason, she would sit down that night, test her skills against a borrowed textbook, and realize that she was actually pretty good. Maybe Ferruccio would be impressed by something like that. She remembered what the original message under the painting said, of course:

Your faith hath made thee…

With time, that became the thing Garibaldi was known for. She simply could not stop herself from going out and exploring the city, talking with anyone who seemed interested. At a later date, Ferruccio informed her that she was actually doing a good job, introducing shipgirls to the common man and making them appear so charming. But hey, Ferruccio was actually pretty sweet when she thought you did something helpful intentionally, so….

Even better, she got to impress Ferruccio by simply having a good time with decent people. Hell, one of the people had once asked her to help with some job. Giuseppe just stood there and held a block of wood as the man sanded it, but a photo was taken, and she was suddenly a friend of the workers. A shining example of what a Syndicalist ship could be.

But things had changed. She and Ferruccio had been sent into the Adriatic for some drills when things started getting dicey politically. So dicey, in fact, that their chances of making it home around Sicily were really quite bad. In fact, when the Donau-Adriabund joined the war, their chances if they so much as left harbor were pretty dicey.

Ferruccio seethed. She had spent so much time training, becoming a weapon for the workers and a Syndicalist vanguard, only to be knocked down to propaganda duties on the eastern coast. Made Giuseppe feel pretty miserable too, being so far from the fighting while girls Piemonte and Nicoloso suffered.

But sitting around and moping did precisely nothing to help anybody. Even if they were limited to a small area near the harbor, even if they had to drop everything and run to help operate their AA guns during bombing raids, they could play some part in the fight. Ferruccio had a remarkable understanding of Syndicalist ideals, a good military mind, and a fanatical supporter of the local council. Writing speeches and hammering out civil defense plans… she was great at that sort of thing.

Giuseppe was a bit more boots on the ground, though. Perhaps too boots on the ground for her sister's taste. There was working to help the common man, and then there was doing the job of a common man, something that literally anyone could do with a bit of training.

She was chattering with one of the workers– Odoardo was his name, recently married, worried about the war's impact on his young family– when she spotted Ferruccio's frown out of the corner of her eye. The longer they talked, the more pronounced that frown grew until Giuseppe finally waved the man away.

"You could be doing more than this, Giuseppe."

"Capentry is a noble profession, 'Ruccio. Saintly, even." It had been interesting to pick up. Syndicalist theory was all well and good, but Giuseppe thought actual interaction with an actual workingman doing his actual job was probably a pretty crucial piece of evidence. Maybe she couldn't argue Syndicalism well, but she had gotten closer to living it.

"You're no San Giuseppe. For one, you talk too much." Christ's earthly father, San Giuseppe, said not one word in the Bible. People tried to fill in the space, of course, integrating it into theology.

(Giuseppe was a bit surprised to find that Ferruccio was the sort. Perhaps because she was named for an early modern man, back when religion played such a large role. Perhaps because of that recent young man. What was his name? Frassati? A Vincentian, an alpinist, a scholar, a candidate for beatification… he was the toast of Catholic trade unions throughout the SRI, officially honored by the state Alpine club, even briefly noted by the actual government. The government didn't exactly smile on the Papal investigators lurking around Turin, though, so maybe it was a cynical gesture to court Catholics.)

"Proverbs says that the tongue of the just is as choice silver." Giuseppe shot back, smirking.

"Why do I get the feeling you cherry-picked that?"

"I'm not a cherry picker, I'm a carpenter." Oh, she had absolutely picked it out because it was fun to throw at people, who was she fooling?

"You're a warship."

"And this warship is making a chair. What's your point?" It really was a problem, actually. Houses turned to rubble was the big issue, of course, and she tried to help if it wouldn't drag her too far from her ship… but even miserable shacks weren't empty. People lived in them.

"Giuseppe, you're brilliant enough to be doing so much more…"

"I'm helping the people, aren't I?"

"You are, but…"

"Does it sound more Syndicalist if I call it mutual aid, or whatever?" Giuseppe asked. "I'm building trust with the public so they fall back on me during emergencies, or I'm ensuring they have a positive view of the government that sent them me…"

"I mean, what's the point of fancy Syndicalist theory if we're not working to bring the people together? Uniting the workers of the world requires uniting the people you know first, I think."

"But how do you scale it up?"

"Good question. I bet you know the answer."

Ferruccio laughed.

"What? I'm being serious. We each have our part to play in this, right? I know you'll make the right political choice. Probably." Ferruccio rolled her eyes, but there was a fondness in the upward curve of her lip. "And me? Well, I'll fight when I need to, but otherwise, I think I like working with people."

Maybe carpentry wouldn't win the worldwide revolution. But it materially helped people around her, and it was something she like doing. Kinda funny that she had taken a shine to simple servile labor, but there was an appeal to it. After a tree was taken down and milled, it was in pieces. Useless. However, a carpenter could take all these disparate pieces and make something good out of them.

For thousands of years, the carpenter's job was to make a…

"At least the ship is finally…"

Giuseppe Garibaldi was the man who made Italy…

"It's like she's never going to take a break until Italy is…"

Your faith hath made thee…

For thousands of years, the carpenter's job was to make a…

… whole.

Idk if this was weird but I wanted to try a different style. Inspiration was that Giuseppe perhaps took a bit from her Biblical namesake with the carpentry (I had this strong mental image of Giuseppe dressed like a redshirt working with hammer and nails), while I made that into a theme expressing a deeper desire for a unified 'whole' Italy, perhaps even a unified world.

We stan St. Joseph the worker in this house (and also Pier Giorgio Frassati too)