A/N: This was inspired by a friend of mine. I asked for prompts and she just said angst, so I picked Wash and rolled with it.

Even though this is really short I decided to post it just because I haven't put anything on FanFiction in a while. I hope you like it.

Disclaimer: I don't own it I don't make money off of it etc, etc, etc.

Agent Washington hated nighttime.

He didn't used to hate it. In fact, as a child, he could remember a time when he'd liked the darkness. He could remember a time when the dark hadn't been full of terror.

But now, as he sat on the edge of the bed, wide awake, he realized how much he hated this. There was a slit in the curtains over his window, and he could see moonlight filter through the tree branches outside. It must have been a full moon, because it was surprisingly bright. He tried to concentrate on this, thinking about the light of the moon, how comforting that was.

Washington blinked slowly, then rubbed his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair and then sighed, a long, slow, defeated sigh.

"Well…" he muttered. "It's not like staying awake will help."

He lay back onto the bed and pulled the blanket back over himself.

… … …

In the early days, when he'd first come home, he'd been unable to sleep. He was too wired, still stuck in his old mindset, his old habits. But as days turned into weeks, he realized this wasn't normal. He napped, but very briefly, and had constant bags under his eyes. His boss at the café told him he wasn't sleeping right, but Washington kept ignoring him.

He'd been right though, his boss.

As Washington found out when he went to a sleep clinic.

They told him he was an insomniac and gave him drugs to help him sleep.

That was when the problems started.

… … …

He was in dark buildings with dirt floors. Light filtered in through slits and cracks. It'd be deadly silent for a second and then everything would explode.

Or maybe he was being chased, shot at, stabbed.

Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was his friends.

… … …

He'd wake up gasping, scrambling, his knife in his hand out of muscle memory, out of sheer panic. He'd be gripped by all those fears again and he would collapse, exhausted, drained.

Why sleep when the nightmares felt so real?

He'd tried everything he could think of: calming teas, relaxing music, meditation, distractions.

Every night was horrifying.

So he went back to the clinic and told them about the nightmares. They told him he wasn't just an insomniac, then. They told him he had PTSD.

He can remember nodding at that, the diagnosis made sense.

So they assigned him a therapist, told him they'd look for different solutions but that "these things take time, and who knows? It might fade with time."

… … …

But it's been a year and he can't remember the last night of good sleep he's had.

So he broods half the night, and has nightmares the other half.

They throw him right back into the moment, into places he thought were gone forever, into memories he regrets, into moments he wishes he could forget. He can feel and see the pain so viscerally.

His therapist tells him he can't change the past, and Washington nods along mutely, accepting the advice stoically, wondering if this will ever change.

His therapist tells him to have hope, and to hang on, but Washington doesn't know how long that'll work for.

He looks at the sign in the therapist's office that reads, "It gets better," and thinks "Not for me."