after she gets to know nick, jane starts to collect bits and pieces of gen 1 and 2 synths. she tries to do it surreptitiously - she knows how it would look if anyone caught her stuffing an arm into her pack after a fight, even if it is sparking instead of bleeding. but she wants to learn how to fix him.
so she starts to spend some of her evenings cross-legged next to the campfire, bent over the intricate joints of a metal hand resting in her lap, teaching herself how to take it apart and put it back together again. or she spends them hunched over a desk, carefully tracing the path of each cable running along a spinal strut as she sketches out wiring diagrams by candlelight.
the ink of the pens she finds has long since dried, and the plastic is brittle and cracked, but treated wood has resisted the rot, and a knife still sharpens a pencil just fine. she keeps the sheaf of papers in a map case picked up from the museum of freedom's dusty gift shop, tied tightly to the side of her pack.
(later on, she makes copies. there's ink again, though it's not as portable, so she keeps a set at every settlement she can, locked away in safes set into cool, dry concrete floors.)
