This should have been a night to remember - the quintessential high school experience, the bow on the end of the year that saw children dressed up like adults in perhaps the only expression of high class luxury they may have seen, with far too much money thrown into everything from tuxedos and dresses, on transportation if someone was so inclined to find something other than their mom's minivan to pull up in, and whatever other accouterments might have been required to be the Prom King or Prom Queen or at least make a good show of it among their peers. The ugly ducklings could be golden geese, the unpopular could for a moment be looked at as someone perhaps worth what attention might have been granted to them --

-- and just as well, they could have been a mockery.

In no universe has Henry Lee ever thought himself popular. The quiet and reclusive art student that garnered more attention from questionable A.P. Art content, the same that terrifies some students as much as it intrigues others and makes a handful believe him nothing more than the periodical subject of their ridicule thanks to everything from sub-brand clothing to what he puts on canvas with a particular skill and proficiency appreciated only by instructors who share open-mindedness in their shared medium, held nothing to suggest he would have amounted to anything more than a ghost who could pass through the high school sphere without drawing such attention to himself, and this - this night to remember - perhaps secured it in the sense of relief that washed over him.

He was still nothing. He was still a nobody. He was still that person, but he wasn't the pretty girl with the pretty dress and the pretty date who, upon what one could only believe was a cruel joke to play on someone who warranted nothing of the sort, had been the star of the show, the belle of the ball, and the unwitting recipient of a pig's blood shower that seemed to splatter against the ground in an unheard crescendo that reached his ears and his alone.

Its a tune accompanied by a familiar whisper, one eons old, perhaps older if there were a word he could use to describe it beyond such immeasurable time to a mortal human being never mind a teenager, only seventeen years old, that seems to have long bedded itself in his mind, soaking into his veins and traversing the channels of his being with every pump of his heart - pumps that only seem to grow slower, as if time itself has slowed, in those moments that stand between the turn of a bucket hidden high up in the rafters and the inevitable crash onto her form.

It reacts instinctual in the movements that follow, a moment of heroism as he draws himself away from a boy who seems to enjoy the fact he could pull together enough money for a rental tuxedo that fits as if tailored and doesn't mind being seen with someone of such social caliber as long as the night is one they both enjoy, seconds too late when the splash rings in his ears in what might as well have been a explosion that takes no prisoners if they happen to be in close vicinity - no prisoners except for Henry who seems to pass right through it.

Or, rather, it passes right through him.

"Molly?"

Even in the quiet his voice seems too loud, his attention turning to those around the room who are more like sheep to the social media outlets that draw them to pick up their phones and become the next facilitator of unwanted internet fame and ridicule. The popular, the unpopular, the girls, the boys - it doesn't matter if they thing there is a slice of the circular viralocity to come of the internet age, and its all he can do to try and shield her.

Fuck the suit, his jacket removed to drape over her shoulders while he eyes those around them, suspect of everything from the slightest wave of a dress to the snap of someone's camera to the administrators who rush in without immediate understanding of what had just occurred or what they - those who had been responsible for such a hateful showing against someone who could have been their peer in another life - might have unleashed.

And oh, how they had unleashed Hell as they poked and prodded, jeered at and insulted, teased and humilitated in those moments where they thought no one was looked or thought that those who had cared not about what had happened. There were silent parties - arguably everyone in the room now had been a silent party in the secrecy of such a plot - but they had been seen; and Molly - Molly had been seen.

He gives her nothing more than a whisper of archaic lines in languages of a different nature that those taught in any class, in any books, from one grade to another and into the institutions of higher learning lest in specialized courses of questionable content, but only as a pillar of support from the unknown, a spot of clarity that she nor the evil within is alone, and any motion therefter is in an attempt to help her evade further torment; to escape what was viewed widely unscapable in such a technological age; to put a pin in the night until the horrors born of such come to light.

There is no retaliation, but he knows to read the dark horizon when he sees it; and it is always the popular ones to go first, the cheerleaders and the jocks and the social butterflies who embrace cruelty against their peers while lacking apathy to put themselves in their shoes. They're the highest of the high, the ones who fall the furthest, and as it seems there's a ticking timeline close to its end on a number of Sunnydale High students in those days leading up to the summer, he finds himself the least surprised in the shocks and horrors to follow.

He's even less surprised when that being, the one whispering in her ear, is recognized by that of his own in such mutual shadows that seems to swirl at Camp Anawanna; that comes on the tail of mites that he wants nothing more than to eradicate as he sits in the darkness of dimensions unknown, the very same that chills him to the bone and brings him closer to the voice inside his head, the one which whispers among the screams of those trapped within dimensions of his devising with torments unknown in any specificity beyond the depths of which required to bring on such agony; that is only emboldened by ridiculous and embarrassment of uncontrollable circumstances and fed by the grief and upset felt by those around him as the camp, almost in its entirety, turns on those loud enough to ask for help.

It's there he recognizes her in full, the evil within that lies just beyond the veil of existence, and its there he brokers understanding in very few words because just as he knows who lies beyond, it is foolish to think she doesn't know his as well; that being lying in the darkness, sitting in wait, pushing all the right buttons in soothing strokes that seem to paint his skin cold.

For in his house, dead Chthon waits, dreaming to be free again.