Shaun yawned, blinking sleepily as he stretched. He had literally spent the whole entire trying to get more information. It was 3:27 in the morning and boy was he exhausted. He needed sleep but he told himself he wouldn't sleep until he found helpful information. The rest of the team had already gone to bed but he was stupid enough to stay awake. The British man sighed, taking his glasses off. He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. "I should really get some sleep...." He said to himself. “But I have to find what the Templars are planning..."He sighed. He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, wishing he could sleep. Why did they always have to work so hard? Hell is he knew.

He stood from his chair, walking over to their make-shift kitchen. He poured tea into a white cup, rising it to his lips to take in the warm sweet contents. He yawned again, moving his shoulders to stretch his back. He blinked sleepily, wondering if he was ever going to get his work done. Even if he would get done searching and finding facts on the Templars he still had to write them down individually. That was the real pain in the ass part about his internet searching, writing. Sure, he was used to typing on his keyboard his hands would often cramp up by writing. The historian looked down at his tea, watching the steam float off the liquid and disappear like a ghost when it comes into view. "Still haven't gone to bed yet, Shaun?" A voice asked, making him turn to face the voice. "No...I thought you were asleep. "The British man edged, wanting to know what Salae was doing awake at this time of hour.

 

Salæ had found herself in a new time and place, yet she still had the same job - take out the Templars. She now worked with Desmond and his friends, more attempting to stop something they knew little about from happening than actually routing Templars, but they knocked some heads along the way so she was good. Sal spent many nights awake simply thinking about her life in the past or what was going to happen next now. On this particular night she was restless enough to actually leave her bed.

 

She went toward the kitchen to find Shaun still awake, yawning, but awake. "Still haven't gone to bed yet, Shaun?" She asked of him from the doorway, she watched as he turned his gaze from his cup to her, "No...I thought you were asleep."

 

Sal grinned, "I tried to sleep. But my brain thinks overmuch. You still trying to track down what the Templars are going to do next? Because I doubt you'd make much sense of anything you do find if you are tired." The old-fashioned woman remarked drily as she entered the room.

 

Shaun scoffed, rolling his chocolate brown eyes. "You're so bloody funny, Sal." He responded, biting his tongue to hold in a rude reply. He looked down at her, being much taller than her. "Yeah, I know it's late and all but I just need to at least try to find what they're planning. But I really should sleep too. Oh well." The historian shrugged, knowing he was lying and trying to disguise the exhausted and stressed look on the 24 year old's face. He would often wonder what Lucy would say to him if she were still alive, wondering if she would lecture him about staying awake.

He truly missed her, despite her being a Templar agent. "Work stressing you out too?" He asked, leaning back on the table.

 

Salae smirked as Shaun scoffed at her, "Sleep would certainly do you good, but if you cannot because you feel the need to finish your work, then you cannot." The girl shrugged. She went about making herself hot chocolate as she answered him, "Not so much stressing me, no. I just think about what could happen next, what has happened. I also reminisce about my own time, I miss watching Malik work.” Sal finished making her chocolate and leaned against the counter to face Shaun. “You’re a lot like him actually. Always on about keeping records and your love of history is a match to his.” She smiled at him before taking a sip.

 

He rose his eyebrow, wondering if that was a compliment or an insult. He took a small sip of his sweet warm tea. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm a bit frightened to find out." The historian joked, a rare sight to see unless it was a joke about one of the assassins which were mainly directed towards Desmond. Ah Desmond, a wild and immature Guy he was. Desmond would often joke about Shaun back to him just to get on his nerves. "You miss being in the past? I wonder what I would do in the past considering I just track, hack and sometimes assassinate but that's only when I have to not all the time." He shrugged, setting his cup down onto the table he was leaning against. He removed his glasses, beginning to clean them with the material of his soft and warm grey sweater.

 

Sal smirked, “It’s a compliment Shaun. I am not Desmond. I’m sure you’d find a way to be very useful in the past. You are good at hacking and tracking because of your brains, I very much doubt those would be diminished were you to not have a computer.” She swallowed some of her hot chocolate as he cleaned his glasses. With the lens’s no longer blocking his face it was easy to see how tired he really was. “Mr. Hastings, what if Desmond has some fool idea tomorrow that will need your hacking expertise and you wind up falling asleep in the middle of it because you never went to bed? What would happen then?” Her tone voice claimed that she was only mildly curious.

 

Shaun smiled slightly at her question, seeing at how she was pushing him to let him sleep. "I'll manage, love. I'm too determined to stop now. You know how bad I get whenever I don't finish something that I've set my mind to." He tsked, placing the glassed lens over his chocolate brown eyes. He couldn't help but to be slightly glad someone actually cared about him sleeping instead of staying up, literally they all really didn't care so this was really rare to see coming from his fellow assassin. She was a strange girl but if she were like him, he'd want nothing to do with her. He was normal, and a normal girl is boring. They're all amazing when they're slightly strange and that's just what she was. Not that it was bad or anything! She was from the past and he absolutely loved history. He would often find himself wondering what she saw and had heard in the past compared to now.

 

Sal hid her own smile behind her mug as the sleepy man smiled at her worry, “Well then, would you like any help? I certainly do not understand a computer, but I can write... though not very well in English yet.” She looked a bit guilty at the admission. Ever since she’s come to the future through so weird fluke encounter with a Piece of Eden she’d been slowly learning the language of the time. Mostly English, her speaking and understanding of it was much better than her reading and writing still however, she wasn’t one to give up. She knew several languages from her own time, so learning the new one wasn’t overly difficult.

Shaun seemed slightly glad she had asked him if she could help him out, that would be simply divine for an extra hand and to offer him to write the information out was even better for him. "If you want to help, you can." He agreed with a smile, nodding as he answered. He gestured for her to come with him with a soft wave of his hand, making his way to his computer. He sat down softly on the chair he always was seated in, setting the cup of warm tea down onto the metal desk. He bent over, opening a drawer to grab a yellow lined notepad and a black inked pen. He pressed the button of the ball-point pen, setting it down lightly on the yellow paper pad. He pulled a chair up beside him, smiling sleepily as he gently patted the seat of the cushioned chair. "If you want I could show you how to use a computer." He offered generously.

 

Salae smiled as he agreed to her suggestion and followed him to his designated work station. She watched as he set everything up for her to help him and patted the seat. “I’m always willing to help.” She grinned at him as she sat down, “And I’d love to learn to use a computer. But for now I think it best if I simply learn to write properly in English, yes?” She set her cup of chocolate down on a nearby table before picking up the pen and paper. “So, how should we do this? You want to just read off what you want me to write? Or... I honestly can’t think of another process... but?” Sal trailed off with a shrug of her shoulders, she still wasn’t sure what kinds of etiquette were allowed or how she could potentially mess something up by saying the wrong thing. Learning new languages tended to do that to a person. But besides all of that she also had to get used to different clothing, her assassin’s robes being a bit too obvious in this era. The t-shirt wasn’t so bad and she was still allowed to wear her pants, but not having a hood tended to freak her out a little and she would occasionally twitch like she was bring up her cowl only to find that it no longer existed. In this case her ‘twitch’ was her more of her putting it back but she blushed a deep red when she caught herself doing it.

 

Shaun removed his glasses, cleaning the clear lens before placing them back over his chocolate brown eyes. He guided the mouse to the browser icon, tapping his index finger down gently before glancing over at the female at her question. "Hm? Yeah, I really can't write an type. I'm fine with typing and reading it out loud but I simply can't write the facts and states. They cramp up my fingers and then I can't type for a few hours and time is a very precious item right now, Salae." The British historian yawned, not daring to rub his eyes this time. Sure it was 3:45 A.M. but just as he said "Time is a very precious item." Right? Right. He wouldn't give up on this night until he had exactly 30 statements down about Abstergo and their plans, he knew it wasn't good for him but he didn't care he had to do this to protect Desmond, to protect Salae, to protect Rebecca, to protect William. He had to do this almost every night to prevent their entire plan from falling apart. That's what made him nervous. What if he couldn't do this one night and every part of their plan was ruined. He would hate himself if it came to that, in fact he probably couldn't live with himself or look the others in the eyes knowing he was the one who messed up their plans. How could he live with himself if it came to that?

 

Sal nodded her head and got ready to write down whatever Shaun told her too. “Yes, time seems to slip by ever more quickly.” She thought back to when she’d touched the Apple on accident as Malik was attempting to reason with Altaïr about it and it had rolled across the floor to come to a stop at her feet. She heard Malik scream her name and the next thing she knew she was standing in front of Desmond. She’d freaked out rather badly, however she’d heard “English” before so random words made sense, but the order in which they were said confused her. Initially Salae had thought it was some kind of Templar trap, she’d soon learned otherwise and was grateful to be working as an Assassin in any time frame. Sal glanced up from her musings to see Shaun sitting with a trace of panic in his eyes and frowned in concern. “Ready when you are. How far do you plan to go? Like...” She paused unsure of how to word her question; she growled mentally she just couldn’t understand why English was so hard! She knew that Shaun was almost constantly on a computer, inputting data, or retrieving it, looking for weak points in Templar stuff and trying to figure out their next move – but she was unsure of how much information he wanted to get in the wee hours of the morning. She was a bit concerned with the flash of panic but wasn’t sure where it was centered so decided not to mention it outright.

 

Upon hearing her voice and her question, Shaun shook those scary thoughts from his head. Those horrifying thoughts that polluted his brilliant mind that was normally filled with facts on history. But the scary thoughts always found their way into his mind every week. Every week this would happen. Every week he would think about the slightest thing he could do to screw up and put this entire team of assassins in complete disarray and possibly get them all killed. He hated those thoughts; just thinking about one bad thing sent many shivers and chills up his spine. It was like Abstergo actually forced thoughts into his head, but that was impossible. He turned his gaze over to the girl, thinking for a moment. "Well I usually put down 30 states, facts, codes and sites." He shrugged, thinking of how easily it was to find the sites. He pulled up the websites that had threaded to the Abstergo's area. Getting the codes was the easy part, the hard part was the hacking, breaking past the firewall, and keeping his identity a secret so they couldn't find them.

 

Sal nodded, her face serious, she could still see the slight fear in Shaun’s eyes but hoped that her help would lessen it a bit. She certainly didn’t want her presence to hinder him in any way. She watched closely as he maneuvered around the internet, trying to keep up with the fast slight movements of mouse and the many things flashing across the screen. Salae simply waited for Shaun to let her know what to write down; as long as he said it clearly she would be able to write it out, even if she didn’t fully understand what it meant. She’d helped Rebecca by writing out statistics and equations and stuff that there was no way for Sal to understand, but it freed up Rebecca’s hands so she could finish her project. The new little gizmo for Desmond was done much quicker because Rebecca wasn’t having to stop and write out the plans herself so she’d have them for later if she messed up somewhere. That had been fun and she’d learned a little bit about what Rebecca did, she hoped she would learn a bit from helping Shaun as well.

 

Shaun eventually pushed the thoughts out of his head, only for them to come back in his dreams when he finally went to sleep. "It says here that Vidic is locating in New York, if I'm lucky enough then I might be able to pass the firewall for the Abstergo website and not get caught. It's risky and dangerous but it's worth a shot, right?" He mumbled, clicking an icon. With the help of Salae he could get to bed faster. Oh he most defiantly needed sleep, staying up night after night wasn't healthy at all. "And Vidic's animus' are starting to malfunction. This is very good! By the animus malfunctioning it'll slow them down. Very good indeed." The historian muttered cheerily, cheered that they were going to get done before the Templars and he could also get some sleep. The thing that bothered him was the dreams....those damned dreams.

 

Salae made notes about how this Vidic person was going to New York and that the Templar’s machine was malfunctioning, even though she wasn’t sure if that was actually needed information. But she watched Shaun as he seemed to cheer up at the muttered information, so she figured it was a good thing and could do with being jotted down. She wanted the tired man to be able to sleep, so she wrote down the different sites he mentioned and the pertinent information about them as he glided his way around a space she barely understood. His hands tapping the keys were nearly silent and flashed at a speed she was sure she would never match even if Shaun taught her how to use a computer. She was still a bit bothered about why Shaun stayed up so late when he could just go to bed with everyone else and get started early again, but she didn’t want to voice a concern that might make him angry with her. She didn’t fully understand how things worked here after all; it could just be how he worked.

 

After more and more hacking, searching and breaking past website boundaries, Shaun looked over to his friend. "Well, that's as much as I could get. Did we get 30 or over?" The British assassin asked, clicking the exit icon to shut down his browsing websites. He silently prayed that he wasn't caught by any of the cyber Templars. Though, those types of Templars were easy to get rid of but they were also quite annoying. He sat back in his chair, removing his glasses to rub his light blue eyes, trying to rub the obvious exhaustion away but clearly failed. He set the pair of clear lenses down onto his makeshift desk, running a hand through his hair with one hand while the other picked up his warm tea. He rose the glass to his lips, taking in the warm and sweet contents before setting the small cup back down.

 

Sal lifted her head from the paper to look at Shaun, “Looks like we got 31.” She smiled at the tired assassin before her, “Finish your tea and then get to bed. We can look it over after we sleep.” She placed the note pad and pen on the table and picked up her chocolate, it was a bit odd tasting having cooled so much, but she drank it anyway. She didn’t fully understand a lot of the information she’d written down, and she really hoped that her writing was legible.

 

Shaun nodded with agreement. Finally, sleep. He thought happily as he took a small drink from the cooled tea. "I can't thank you enough for your help tonight, Sal. Is there anything I could do for you?" He asked, as he finished his tea and set the teacup down. He turned his chair over to look at her, a small rare smile gracing his tired face.

Salae smiled over at Shaun when he turned to face her but finished her chocolate before answering. “Maybe teach me how to use the internet? However only when you have the time, and certainly not in place of sleep.” Her dark brown eyes twinkled merrily as she looked the tired man over. “For now I simply suggest sleeping. It helps everyone if everyone gets their sleep.”