fear exists for one purpose: to be conquered.

[directives]

When; August 24th, past midnight
Rating; PG?
Characters; Kathryn Janeway (directives) & OPEN
Summary; Can't sleep, chilling at Xanadu with tl;dr and coffee.
Log;

She awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes transfixed on the window and the dark, starless sky beyond it. The still floor the bed rested upon startled her awake, tricking her well trained subconsciousness into thinking that stillness meant something was wrong with Voyager, her hand flying up to tap a combadge that wasn't there. Because she wasn't on her ship, because she didn't deliberately fall asleep in uniform so she could jump out of bed and be able to reach the bridge in under three minutes if needed. There was no inevitable weapons' fire to follow suite at any moment. She wouldn't hear Voyager's bulkheads creaking in protest as phaser fire penetrated their weakening shields and ripped across the hull.

That great, black expanse, though--

How a night too cloudy for stars could send her tumbling back to the start of the year she hailed from and the heavy burned of irrational guilt associated with it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. Kathryn knew she wasn't looking out at the Void, but that didn't stop the darker parts of her mind from daring to entertain thoughts from when they were forced to travel through it.

It wasn't the first time the stillness woke her. Fourth time this week in fact, with the number resting somewhere in the teens for how many times it managed to jolt her awake at ungodly hours of the night since her arrival. Sometimes, she thought she'd grown too firmly into her captain's shoes that she'd be unable to shake any of the habits she had deeply ingrained into herself over the course of the past five years. It made the thought of returning to Earth and sleeping in a bed planetside, whether it be in Starfleet quarters in San Fransisco or her mother's house in Indiana, somewhat daunting.

Being in the City was forcing her to consider things about going home that she hadn't before, things that would've kept her up were she not already alert. Once she was up, she was up -- at least that managed to stay the same, ship or no ship.

With a jacket pulled over her pajamas and her hair gathered lazily and messily at the back of her head to keep it off her neck, she grabbed a freshly brewed cup of coffee and slipped her feet into a pair of shoes, leaving the confines of the apartment for the darkness of the outside world. (If only to reassure herself that darkness would never touch her again.)

Eventually, she found herself in Xanadu and sat down with her coffee at the nearest picnic table.