I do not own PLL.
The dark-haired girl was soft in his arms, the man noted. He felt wetness and smelled the salt of her tears. She was crying, weeping, grieving. It was the kind of sadness that never stopped, the kind that haunted someone for remainder of their days. She shifted slightly so that she could bury her face in the crook of his shoulder. Her breathing, though ragged, was becoming more even. He allowed himself to stroke her hair. She needed comforting, she needed happiness. She was a nameless girl, like a thousand other nameless girls, who had had tragedy befall her.
Sighing, the girl extracted herself from his arms. Are you okay? he asked her. Yes, she whispered softly, her voice barely audible. I don't know what brought this on, she told him. Things happen, he replied with a shrug. She sniffed, and his heart broke again. Stay as long as you need to, he said, eyeing the crowded hallways of the school. No, she answered firmly, I'm okay now.
He let her go, but not before giving her a comforting kiss on the top of her head. She looked at him gratefully before being swept up into the mass of people outside his classroom door. He sighed as he watched her.
That was the last time he saw her. Graduation was only days later. He had heard her father had taken her out of the country, taken her somewhere where she could grieve in peace, without reminders, somewhere where the ghosts of her pasts wouldn't haunt her.
The man soon came to regret his impulsive act of kindness. He was accused of something that did not happen, that would never have occurred. The whispers and the rumors stopped nearly as soon as they started. And they were quickly forgotten.
He couldn't remember what her face looked like anymore. He remembered sad features through tear-filled eyes and blurry memory.
She haunted that place in the back of his mind where he put the things he tried to forget, the things he never wanted to remember, the place where consciousness meets darkness, where the living touches the dead, where the past meets the present.