When Ximena Santiago turned eleven, her parents took her to New York City for her birthday. She got to skip a couple days of school, and they were going to watch The Lion King on Broadway. She wished, now that she was about to turn thirteen and those military airships crashed into the Potomac and there's a ghost hiding in the back corner of her broken down warehouse, that they had gone to Disneyland instead.

He appeared, like many things in Ximena's life since New York, with no warning and little fanfare.

She had been out the day he showed up, bumping into people and emptying their pockets, stopping by corner stores with decoy security cameras and filling her bag with snacks and small cans of food. She had gotten good at it - not that she ever felt good about it, but it beat dumpster diving.

She learned that if she went out around the time schools let out, she could blend in with the kids making stops before heading home. No one ever really noticed that her clothes were a little more dirty, that her hair was a little greasier, a little more tangled.

No one ever noticed her. Not since New York. She liked it, usually.

She never stayed out too long, and when it was time to head back, she gave the straps of her - now fuller - backpack a secure tug and ducked from the busy street into a quiet alley. From there, she made her journey almost absentmindedly, jumping over murkey puddles from the April rain that fell earlier and wrinkling her nose at the rotting garbage that had yet to be picked up. Not many people took these alleys - not the "respectable" people at least. Not the groups of kids she pretended to be a part of, and not the adults that sent these kids to school.

The alleys were sketchy, which meant they were usually deserted, which meant they were Ximena's favorite way to move about the city.

Though, sometimes she'd come across a homeless person, another runaway, but never anyone as young as her. She wondered if maybe they usually stayed in another part of the city. She wondered if she had been left out on that too.

She passed a couple familiar faces - Helen and Marty, who had set up shop beneath an old fire escape. She didn't actually know if their names were Helen and Marty; she had never actually spoken to them before. But they looked like a Helen and Marty, and they had never felt wrong to Ximena. Oh, she'd sometimes feel their paranoia, their frustration, and their general exhaustion, but she never picked up on the telltale rage or malicious glee that told her to get the hell out of a place before things went very bad very quickly. So she would nod at them when she passed, and they would regard her warily.

They were the closest to friends she had. Which was sad for a twelve year old.

This time, however, when she passed them, Marty called out. Or rather, he had whistled, and Ximena was hit with a mix of nostalgia and annoyance. She didn't like getting whistled at. Her dad used to get her attention like that when she was younger, and she hadn't liked it then either. Still, it turned out that whatever pavlovian conditioning stuck around, even after two years, and she skid to a stop and turned to look at the pair.

Marty nudged Helen, and she spoke, her voice rasping and strained.

"You catch the news lately, nena?" she asked, and Ximena frowned. She hadn't, not really. Yeah, she knew about how the airships crashed last week; it was kinda hard to not to when it involved Captain America himself. Even a little girl that spent most of her time hidden away from the rest of the city was going to hear about that.

"Not really?" She gave a shrug. "No TV."

"Don't need no TV to read the newspaper."

"No money to buy newspaper," Ximena responded. It was a lie - just that day she pocketed at least fifty bucks in cash, not to mention what she had grabbed from the stores. And not that Helen had to know, but there really wasn't much to stop Ximena from just breaking into one of those newspaper box things. They were so flimsy.

Helen eyed her backpack knowingly, and Ximena looked away, tugging at the straps again. "What's it matter anyway?" She didn't grumble, she knew better than to, but it was a close thing.

"There's a bad man running around, nena," Helen said, and when Ximena looked at them again, she saw Marty nodding along. "One that dropped those ships in the river." The girl wanted to shrug off the warning. She never had to worry about bad men, not really. Her last foster father had been a bit of an asshole, but that was mainly just him getting on her for not passing a couple math tests. Not even when she was on her own did she have any run-ins with "bad men." The judge that had refused to give her abuela custody of her after New York was the closest thing to a bad man she had come across.

Anyway, she figured she could handle herself if she met another.

"How bad?" she asked.

"Bad enough. Killer. Beat up Steve Rogers."

"Captain America?" Ximena tsked. Shoulda minded his own business then, she thought, and even then she knew it was unfair. He's the good guy, isn't he?

She figured having to sit through his stupid PSAs when she got in trouble in school just rubbed her the wrong way.

Helen nodded. "They haven't caught him," she went on. "Might be still in the city."

"Ain't worried about some bad man," Ximena muttered, kicked out her foot and adding more scuffs to her shoe. They were about to fall apart. Water seeped in the rips on the canvas when it rained.

"Worry about this one, girl."

"Lotsa bad men around here, though. How am I s'posed to know which one's bad enough, huh?" she demanded, getting tired of this conversation. She didn't care about no bad man that beat up on Captain America. She didn't care about the ships that fell in the river - they hadn't fallen on any people, and that's all she cared about.

But she felt the concern falling off of Helen and Marty when they looked at her, and she knew they were just looking out in their own paranoid way. They were the only ones who had since she'd been in the city.

Helen clicked her tongue in disdain at Ximena's attitude, the way she had heard her tias and tios, back when they were her tias and tios and not strangers that left her stranded alone halfway across the country, do to her when there were family visits. It filled her with ire, and she went on.

"'Sides, bad men don't always look bad. Sometimes they look nice, and sometimes they act nice. Saw a show once with a bad man that went to church and everything, and he still killed plenty of people."

"TV ain't real life," Helen said, and Ximena rolled her eyes. Maybe not, but there's superheroes running around making messes out of anything, so she didn't think that was a very good argument.

"And what about real life people that look bad but are actually good? Like-like doctors that're all big with tattoos and piercings? They look scary, but they're good." A flutter of frustration bubbled from Helen, and Ximena snapped her mouth shut before she said anything that really pissed the woman off. "Jus' sayin'," she added.

"Listen, we don't know nothing, alright?" Helen said, and sounded a bit like she regretted letting Marty talk her into warning the girl. "Just watch yourself, nena."

She considered her words, and absentmindedly wondered why Marty hadn't done any talking. She eyed him, and noted the scarf he had wrapped around his neck, despite the heat of the day.

"Alright," she said, slipping her thumbs through the straps of her bag. "I'll look out for the bad man." Helen nodded as Ximena gave a quiet "thanks" over her shoulder and scurried away, wanting nothing more than to hole-up in her almost-a-home for the rest of the day. The longer she was out, the better chance some cop had of noticing her and dragging her away to another foster home. Or that school back up in New York.

When Ximena had run away from her foster family, she hadn't exactly known what she was doing. A childish part of her that survived New York had thought maybe she could make it all the way south into Mexico, and her abuela would be waiting for her with open arms. She got as far as DC before it hit her how stupid that plan was. For now, all she knew was that she didn't want to to be shipped from home to home to some weird school in upstate New York until she was eighteen. (She hadn't actually made it to the school; she had ditched out after hearing her foster parents talking about it one night.) She was tired of being passed around like a broken toy. She wanted to make her own choices. She wanted somewhere to stay.

As it turned out, the place to stay was a broken down little building that hasn't been torn down yet in the middle of DC.

Ximena thinks her new haphazard not quite home was a small storage warehouse once before it went to hell. She didn't care much what it used to be, so long as it had a roof and for the most part kept out the cold - it had been March when she ditched out, and there was still snow on the ground.

Sure, there were a few broken windows, but they were far too high for anyone to climb up through, and the doors were heavy, rusted things that were far too hard for people to push open anymore. She figured that was why no one else had called dibs on it before. That or it was haunted, but she hadn't seen any ghosts, and she figures she's the type of person that would be able to see that stuff. So she liked to blame the door.

She knew, in the way all twelve year old's knew when something was not quite normal about a person, that she should not have been an exception to the heavy door's weight. Before the mess that was New York, she wouldn't have been. Thing change, she figured, when you have a building dropped on you and your parents.

The aftermath was… chaotic, to say the least. The city was a mess for any normal person, nevermind a recently orphaned eleven year old that had to feel every little horrible and traumatic thing the rest of the city felt. And so maybe she broke a few ribs on a few caseworkers that got too close during that time, and maybe she learned the hard way that it was better to draw into herself until it was safe to reach .

It didn't matter much anymore. All she knew is that she needed to keep the whole thing on the down low, because she knew what she was. Had known since she was still eleven and caught some FOX program. A mutant. A freak .

She could live with being a freak. It just meant she could open the door.

She stopped at the door and pushed it open easily, just enough for her to slip in. Tugging the door shut behind her, she paused where she was to let her eyes adjust. It wasn't dark, not truly, as light streamed in through the dirty windows, and beams of dust lit up the building. But it had been sunny outside, and for a second, she could barely make out the shadows within.

"Hello, stupid dust!" she called out, as she always did when she first got in. "Hello, stupid ghosts!"

A reckless, adventurous part of her still hoped that maybe there was something haunting the building.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out the old broken shelves that had been left behind. They were rusty metal things that had loose and bent screws. Nothing could really be placed on them anymore, and when Ximena had tried to push them to the side - there were seven total - she ended up breaking three even worse than when she found them. Two had to be left were they were; even she didn't want to risk it.

There was something of a loft in the back, a shaky metal stairwell leading up to it, and Ximena had considered making her nest up there. The first time she went up there, however, was her last. The stairs were as rattly and rusted as the shelves, and for all that they were metal, she was surprised she made it back down without her foot falling through a step.

The wall beneath the loft space was lined with old cabinets and a counter, which Ximena may or may not have filled with her finds from her scavenger hunts in the city. She also may or may not have had to scare off a family of possums that was living in one of them.

It was by these cabinets that Ximena had made her nest of stolen blankets and pillows, clear on the opposite side of the building from the stairs of death. Resting upon them she had Oso-Osito, a small stuffed bear her grandma had gotten her when she had seen her just following the Attack of New York.

She didn't notice the man, not at first. Not until she was into the back of the building, stopping by her nest and hidden loot. She had just thrown her bag down - there was nothing breakable in it -, had just greeted Oso-Osito like she had the dust and ghost, and was about to sit herself down as well to go through it when she felt him.

The emotions were barely there, but Ximena still felt them, and she felt a prick of nervousness when she did. People were crap at hiding their emotions. Most of the time, when they tried to shove them down, they ended up coming back stronger.

Maybe she had finally pushed the ghost too far this time by calling it stupid.

She glanced around, looking for shadow figures with red eyes, waiting for the air to go cold like the Ghost Adventures people say happen. She was even prepared to hear clanking chains and low moans like the ghost in the old Muppets movie she had seen once.

There were no red eyes, chilly air, or clinking chains.

There was a man in dark clothes with long dark hair that fell over his face. He was too far for her to get a real look at him other than that; he stood in the back corner, half hidden by the shadows beneath the Stairs of Death. Ximena stared at him, not moving, scarcely breathing, and when she blinked, she expected him to have disappeared. That's what ghosts always do in movies.

He did not. He stared back at her, unmoving, unblinking, and Ximena decided he must be a ghost, because his eyes must have started to burn by now. She rather felt like burning under the weight of his stare.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, unsure of what to do when she reached for him, trying to feel , and she could feel him follow the movement. Wariness, confusion, an inkling of fear. It floated from him softly, like thin wisps of smoke from a blown out candle. Muted. Stifled. An imprint rather than a complete person.

"Are you a ghost?" she asked, her words breaking the thick silence that had fallen. "I didn't mean to call you stupid if you are," she added, deciding it would be best to cover all her bases. She didn't need some poltergeist ruining her life. The man didn't speak, and she wondered if he had actually heard her when he gave a small, tense shake of his head. "You feel like one," she accused before she could stop herself. "And you kinda look like one too."

The man spoke. "Not a ghost-" he stopped short, and Ximena felt a flutter of surprise at his own words. It doubled, surprise at his own surprise. He paused, and Ximena could all but feel him gather his thoughts as well as she could feel him shove away the emotion he had just experienced. She let him have a moment. "Not anymore."

Ximena clicked her teeth in annoyance, and he shifted, tensed at the sound. She pretended not to notice, and pretended she didn't do the same at the sight of it.

"That don't make no sense. Maybe you are a stupid ghost." She wanted a reaction from him - adults didn't like being called stupid, especially by mouthy little girls. And if he reacted badly, she could throw him out. He did nothing, and Ximena huffed, wondering why she even bothered with this line of questions. Obviously, he was just a crazy that wandered in.

"What're you doing here?" she demanded. "This is mine. The door was closed." She scowled as her annoyance festered into anger, and she took a step forward, bringing her fists to rest on her hips. The man didn't react to her display, not really. Quirked his head to the side a bit, as though he was assessing her. He gave no indication of answering her, nor of leaving anytime soon.

Her anger bubbled over, and she almost stomped her foot before stopping herself.

"Why are you here, stupid ghost, and who are you?"

For all that Ximena couldn't see the man very well, she could still catch how his expression seemed to… falter. A sort of blankness took over his face before his brows furrowed, and for the first time since she had seen him, the man looked away from her.

He didn't answer her, and she knew that he wouldn't.

"What, do you not know?" she demanded, her voice falling into the same taunt she had used when she was still in school and some jerk had wanted to try their hand at messing with her.

Once, the taunts had not been enough (or maybe she had gone too far, but the kid had it coming), and a boy named Jason Travis had grabbed a fist full of her hair, tangling his hand in her curls, and yanked. The pull didn't budge her an inch, and Jason had left with a broken arm. When he came back to school, he didn't look Ximena in the eye for a month.

The man said nothing, didn't move, and she could only just catch something coming from him. A flurry of emotions. Regret, uncertainty, emptiness… And Ximena was hit with a realization. He's lost.

She had met plenty of lost people before. There had been more than she could count after New York. She herself had been one. And she knew it sucked. The man looked at her again, and she could see the irresolution on his face.

He really didn't know who he was.

He probably had nowhere to go.

She sighed, throwing her head back dramatically. She didn't feel bad about how she acted toward hm. She didn't. But she remembered being lost herself after New York City, and she remembered no one wanting her, and she… could empathize.

"I guess… you can stay," she said, and there was a quirk of confusion from the man at the idea of this little girl allowing him this. "But you gotta stay over there on that side," she added in a rush. "And you have to let me throw…." she looked around and grabbed her bag. She half expected the man to leave as she rummaged through it one handedly before pulling out a battered journal notebook. She flipped it open and tore out one of the few blank pages left out of it. Dropping the bag and book, she crumpled the paper into a ball and gave it a test toss in her hand. "This at you. To prove you're not a ghost.

"Not a ghost."

You gotta prove it if you wanna stay," she told him. "Else the door's right there, Mr. Ghost." He made no move toward the door, and unless Ximena was imagining it, which she might have been, she swore she saw him tense, as though waiting for the hit. He would humor her then.

She threw the paper ball at him, using a little more force than she needed to, and had aimed at his head - he deserved it for breaking into her place. She hadn't expected him to catch it; he shouldn't have been able to catch it. But with a flash of silver, he had.

He held the paper in a metal hand, attached to a metal arm.

And it was probably the coolest thing Ximena had ever seen since being in DC. If he had just shown her that to begin with, she would have immediately let him stay for the added decor alone.

"Not a ghost," the man repeated one last time before tossing the paper back at Ximena. She fumbled in catching it, not expecting it, and just like that her awe at his cool arm was replaced with indignation. When she looked at him again, he had settled down on the floor, well within her sight, and she wondered if that was for her benefit or his.

She liked him better when she had thought he was a ghost.

The girl should not have found him. If he hadn't allowed himself to slip up, he never would have been in the situation to be found; in the week since he had jumped into the river after the man - ( I'm with you 'til the end of the line) - he had let himself fumble. He had gotten sloppy. He must have for the girl to have noticed him.

He watched the girl from under the stairs, and tried to puzzle out how she had noticed him. He had planned on only staying until nightfall, hiding in the darkness beneath the stairs until whoever else inhabited the building had fallen asleep. He had noticed the blankets in the other corner, but after nearly running into a homeless couple in another alley, he had been desperate - no, not desperate. The Soldier did not get desperate. But I am not the Soldier anymore, am I?

The girl noticed him, somehow. She had noticed him, and had taunted him, and something about her tone had been so painfully familiar. And she had allowed him to stay, a firm authority in her voice that led him to believe that she , this little girl, believed she truly had a say in the matter.

He had no reason to let her believe otherwise.

She was a scrawny little thing, The Not Quite Soldier - Mr. Ghost, the girl called him - noticed, with a dirty face. Her hair was a mane of tangled curls and her clothes hung off of her; she was underfed, he realized. Did she not have anyone with her? No one to care for her?

Even he, monster that he was, knew she was too small to be alone.

It was no matter to him. He would only stay until it was safe to leave the city. For now, he sat beneath the stairs and watched the girl.

Ximena hadn't meant to fall asleep that night, not with that man around, but she must have, because she dreamed.

She dreamed of empty city streets layered in a fog of dust and ash. She dreamed of collapsing towers and in her dream there was silence, even as the towers crashed around her. When she screamed, nothing came out, and when she tried to move, it felt as though she was wading through thick sludge. A dark shadow fell over her, and when she looked up, a large figure - as big as the destroyed buildings around her - flew across the sky, chasing a much smaller figure she could barely make out through the ash.

In the silence, a scream cut through. She knew the voice - she only ever heard it in these dreams - and it called her name. And she called back, she always called back.

"Mami-!"

Her eyes snapped open, and Ximena let her eyes adjust to the sunlight as it streamed in through the windows and lit up the building. She shoved down the frustration that always threatened to fester when she woke to these dreams. She'd rather she dreamed of nothing at all.

She sat up, her back aching as the blankets she slept on didn't offer much protection from the hard floor. Sweeping her hair out of her face, she looked around, and nearly threw herself back onto the floor in defeat at the sight of the man with the metal arm still sitting beneath the stairs.

"You're still here?" she muttered, pushing herself up to stand and reaching her arms up as high as she could in a stretch. She looked at him, and it seemed as though he hadn't moved from his cross-legged position on the floor at all through the night. Maybe he hadn't.

She eyed him, and noted how his eyes seemed to be closed. When she reached, she didn't feel a thing from him. Not content that came with sleep. It unnerved Ximena - even in sleep people should feel.

Maybe… no.

She shook her head and grabbed her bag from where it lay next to her pallet - normally she would have stashed her stuff in the cabinets when she got back, but with the man there, she didn't want to risk it. She looked back at the man as she rummaged through it, pulling out a package of slightly broken Pop-Tarts. When she let the bag fall with a clatter, the man did not stir. There was no flutter of emotion from him.

Ximena stared at him hard, as though her glare could get him to move. Surely he felt it. But he was statue still, and something twisted in her gut. She opened the package, rustling the plastic as loud as she could, and still he did not stir.

Okay, maybe.

She narrowed her eyes at him, taking a bite of one of bits of pop-tart, and steadied her resolve. She needed to make sure this jerk didn't come to her place just to die . She glanced around despite knowing there would be no one around except this maybe dead body to judge her, and only once making double sure the coast was clear did she inch toward the man.

"Mr. Ghost?" she whispered as she neared. No movement, and she stopped, still half of the room left to clear. "Oh, god, is he actually dead?" she whined under her breath, giving an anxious shake of her hand. "Okay, okay," she said, and continued her walk. She took smaller steps to take as long as she could, and popped another bit of the Pop-tart in her mouth.

Ximena paused at shadows, steeling herself for a second before moving on. It took only a second for her eyes to readjust to the darkness, and as she neared, she took in his appearance for the first time - he had been too far the day before. She knew his clothes were dark, but now she could see that they were in fact black, and almost… military in nature. It was the vest, she decided, that made it so, with its numerous straps across the chest. Said vest was over a long sleeve shirt, though singular in terms of the sleeve. His metal arm was free, and she wondered if maybe it just didn't fit through any normal shirts' sleeves… or maybe it got caught in the fabric, especially if it's as slim fitting as his other sleeve seems to be.

She was halfway beneath the stairs now, the morning sun casting a long shadow that encompassed her along with the man.

There were dark circles, she noticed as she inched closer, crouching now as she did, under his eyes. His hair fell to his shoulders, and was in desperate need for a wash. She was one to talk, but at least she knew she didn't need to wash hers as often. He was… decent, she guessed, for a crazy homeless dude who didn't know who he was. But even as he slept (lay dead?) he looked tired. He had the beginnings of a beard growing, but she could still make out his sharp jaw.

Apparently sharp jaws are very attractive, according to her last foster mother, but Ximena had never really noticed that kinda thing.

She was close enough to touch him now, and as she reached her hand out to prod his shoulder, she looked for any telltale signs of life. Like breathing.

"Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't be-"

His eyes snapped open, and they were so incredibly blue.

"Boo."

Ximena screamed.

She jerked away, and what would have been a (mostly) gentle prod transformed into a full fledged shove. Or it should have. A flash of silver, and she felt for a brief moment something cold and hard grip her arm like a vice. She tore away, sending herself sprawling back. A hand reached for her, and she slapped at it, not letting it near her as she scuttled away.

When she righted herself, the man was staring at her with wide eyes, up in a half sort of crouch, and through her own burst of anger and shock, she could feel an inkling of surprise coupled with regret from him.

"What the hell!" she shouted, and almost didn't catch his flinch at her voice rising an octave. She pushed herself up, stumbling as she stood, and he fell back into his sitting position, watching her warily, as though waiting for her to lash out again.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she demanded, and instead of waiting for her answer, she looked down at her hand, where her Pop-Tarts were obliterated in her grip. She felt her face fall, and then harden as she glared at him.

He opened his mouth as though to say something, closed it, opened it again. He looked like a fish, and Ximena was just about to point that out (including the word stupid and maybe idiot), when he finally spoke.

"Sorry," he said, almost too soft for her to hear.

She scowled, and hated the sincerity in his voice. "Whatever," she muttered, turning on her heels to walk off. She paused, and spun on him. "Don't-" She took a breath. "Do that again." She looked down her Pop-Tarts again. Maybe the crumbs would still be good. "Jerk."

Do I have any idea of what I'm doing with this fic? Absolutely not. Is that gonna stop me from doing it? You better believe it won't. Lemme know what you think!

Stay schway, y'all