When he was born, he wasn't breathing. (He still isn't (not really)). His skin was slightly blue, beneath the gunk of birth, his tiny features scrunched into a silent cry. No sound came out. The doctors moved quickly, with fancy, expensive equipment and CPR procedures, and a long syringe, chock full of adrenaline, swaddling his rapidly cooling skin in thick, starchy blankets. It wasn't enough. He was born, to a woman who didn't want him, or anything like him, who had never imagined something like this would happen to her, who saw an ironic sort of justice in the idea that this baby, this thing, that had suddenly and unexpectedly bloomed inside her, was never even alive in the first place. For that reason, it was no great surprise that his last breath came before his first. It was too late when they started to resuscitate him, because he was already dead.

The Girl is on Her bicycle, one foot resting on the pedal, framed in monochrome. She stares at the baby. He's small, too small. She can see the blue tinge to his skin, even Here. He stares at Her, with big, pale eyes, wrapped in the hospital blanket. He's not even crying, he's just watching. It strikes Her strangely that She is the first thing he has ever seen.
It's not his time, it won't be for a while. It's not his fault, how could it be? Life hasn't even truly begun yet, but She still feels the phantom twisting of frustration that accompanies a mistake. A soul out of place. He is very much out of place. It will take a long time for him to slot into place, and even then, it will never be perfect. Few things are, even for beings like Her. He has a greater purpose, one he can't even comprehend yet, and somehow, She can tell this is going to be difficult, can tell that he is going to be difficult. She doesn't have the patience for difficult things.

"I don't like you." She tells him.

He doesn't reply, he's only a baby after all.

With a weighted sigh, and haze of light and colour, bursting across the grey sky, She sends him back.

Number Four was not a quiet child. It was like he was doing his best to make up for those few minutes of silence in the beginning. Even before he could properly talk, he'd babble away, gurgle with laughter. He'd also cry louder and longer than any of his siblings, until his face was red and his throat was raw.
And then when he could speak, little changed. He'd laugh and joke, and chatter away at the dinner table, long after their father had ordered them to be silent. He'd make up elaborate stories, far beyond the ones they were learning to read, tracing letters with their fingertips, and Grace's steady guidance. The stories didn't sit well just bottled up in his chest, so he'd serenade his siblings, following them around their vast house if they didn't want to sit and listen. And when none of the living would lend an ear, he was forever humming melodies he shouldn't know, or whispering to the shadows in snippets of languages he'd never spoken.
He wasn't a quiet child, even when the ghosts were broadly friendly. He saw them as friends, as extra playmates. He never knew what they saw him as. A tether to the world of the living? An annoyance? A vessel to something more? He didn't know. And he didn't really care.

They didn't become unfriendly all at once. It wasn't as simple as that. Life (and death) were rarely black and white. The ghosts with evil glinting in their hollow eyes had always lurked at the edges of it. The ghosts with smudges of regret and pain and malice has always existed. He'd probably always seen them. It's just that suddenly, the ghosts dripping in evil, and torment, with sinews loose and blood stained smiles, were all he saw. Maybe it came with age, with understanding of morality, of good and evil. Maybe something pure had held them off at first, until he wasn't pure enough for that sort of protection anymore.
Whatever caused it, they came in their droves, with haunted moans and pained cries.
And he couldn't hold them off. He wasn't strong enough, wasn't brave enough.
So he screamed and screamed and screamed.
But they screamed back louder, and stronger, and longer. Their screams were visceral, and informed by decades of pain and regret. He couldn't compete with that.
And the walls of the house felt like they were closing in, tighter and tighter, suffocating him with fear burrowing into his chest, choking him out.

There was one ghost, with a mangled face, and empty eyes, the hole in its head between them so deep and bloody that he could see out the other side. It wouldn't leave. It couldn't speak. It just gurgled and coughed and choked, drowning on its own blood over and over. But sometimes it would smile at him, something like recognition passing over its distorted features. He hated it. He hated it and feared it in equal parts.
It moved slowly, dragging its bludgeoned limbs behind it. When he was downstairs with the others, or playing in the garden, he could almost escape it, he could almost forget it. But it would always be there again, lurking in the shadowy corners, when he returned to his room. And it would smirk, like it was greeting an old friend. It made him sick to his stomach.
And one day, he couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't take the moans and the coughs, and the bubbling sound that could almost be laughter.

So he ran.

He'd always been faster than his siblings, Number Five not included, because zipping from place to place didn't actually count as running. Number One could run for longer, stamina seeping through his strong limbs, but Number Four was more wirey, more nimble. Especially then, when something more than mindless competition motivated him. He set off through the garden, ripping past the tree, stumbling over the uneven cobbles in his hurry, burrowing himself under the gap in the outer wall that he'd discovered a few weeks previously. He needed to get out. He needed to go far, far away, somewhere the ghost wouldn't, or couldn't follow.

Out on the street for the first time in his life, he barely even paused for breath, barely even took it all in. It was loud, loud with a mixture of the living and the dead, all bustling and speaking and shouting. There were strange sounds, mechanical whirrings, like a clock winding up, and low-pitched purring from the centre of the road. Tall metal poles towered overhead, and bathed the dark street in patches of light. It was strangely beautiful, nothing like anything he'd ever seen before. Less than an instant later, he was sure he heard a familiar gurgle, right in his ear, and he set off like a shot again, like a bullet from a gun, like a knife from Number Two's shaking grasp.
He didn't see it coming. He wouldn't have understood, even if he had.

All he heard was a screeching sound, like a far off wail of despair, getting closer and louder, and more palpable. And then he was blinded, by bright white lights, searing into his vision, and hurtling towards him.
And then.
The impact.

The Girl sighs, fingertips running along the edge of the bicycle bell that isn't. She can't feel it, it doesn't have a texture after all, nothing here does. That's just a side effect of this sort of existence.
He's making his way towards Her, stumbling down the path, with a confused sort of look on his face. He's shorter than Her still, by a good half a foot, so he has to peer up at Her, eyes big and curious. They're still green, blindingly so, against the washed-out backdrop of Her world. He's wearing a neat uniform, although one sock is up, and the other is down. It's as lopsided as he himself is, although he probably isn't aware of that yet.

"Where am I?" He asks, chewing on his lip, sort of nervously, eyeing the trees with a childish wonder. He is still a child after all. She has to remind herself of that fact.

"Where do you think?"

"Is this the outside world?" He asks, eyes still wide with curious wonder, although he folds his arms, slightly defensively across his chest.

"Well, it's outside of the world, that's for sure." She replies, cryptically.

"Can I have a go on your bike?"

She blinks down at him, tightening Her hands around the handlebars that aren't.
"No."

"But I've never ridden a bike before." He pouts, jutting out his lower lip.

"All the more reason that you shouldn't. Wouldn't want you to damage it, or yourself."

"I won't. I pinky promise." He extends one of his hands, with fingers that are very likely sticky.

"That means nothing to me." She replies, with a jagged sigh. He's starting to irritate Her, as children often do. She made it that way, but sometimes She wonders if things couldn't be different. Maybe next time around.

"You're supposed to share. Dad always tells us to share."

The thought of sharing anything with a human is not pleasant.

"I'm sending you back." She informs him. "You've come far too early."

"Back?" He narrows his eyes at Her, in a suspicious look that doesn't all the way suit a six year old, "Will It still be there?"

"What, do you mean the ghost?"

He nods.

And She sighs. She really ought not to make these sorts of concessions, but the less She sees of him, the better.

"If I make the ghost go away, do you promise to stay a little longer this time? Try a little harder? We can't keep meeting like this."

He blinks at her, gears in his childish mind turning. He likely doesn't even fully understand what he's agreeing to. She's not really in the mood to explain it all, not if She doesn't have to, not that She ever really has to do anything.

And then finally he says, "I pinky promise."

"Well, back you go then."

He nods, solemnly, taking one last look around. "Goodbye pretty girl who won't share her bike."

And in a haze of light, She is alone once more.