The ice-cold water trickling down Astraea's skin wasn't really doing anything to ease the burning sensation across her body, if you asked the raven-haired girl who was currently pressed against the bathroom wall clutching her left wrist- the spot where it burnt the most, she would say that even the water was trying to burn her.

The girl let out a low hiss of pain as the black ink on her arm continued to burn as the water coming out of the shower drenched the clothes she hadn't bothered to take off before she had turned on the shower and just stepped underneath it wanting nothing more but for the pain to wash away.

The blond boy who had just graduated from Hogwarts said it had taken a few hours for the pain to stop after he had gotten his mark.

To quote him exactly, Evan had said that it was a test of pain tolerance.

And even though the grey-eyed girl had even been through the cruciatus curse quite some times, she really had no idea if she could take another minute.

But she did have to admit that it wasn't hurting as much as it had when the black-haired man with red bloodshot eyes and pale skin had pressed his wand against her arm and stared at her with a smirk while she stood there, trying her best to hold in her scream.

Astraea breathed out a sigh of relief when the burning sensation finally started to die down, and slid down the wall and sat down on the floor of the bathroom, the water still dripping down her body, her deathly tight grip on her wrist loosening slowly.

The girl's eyes fluttered shut, as her chest rose and fell with each breath she took, not wanting to look at the ink on her forearm just yet. She had told herself when she had just got the mark, that she wasn't ready to see it just yet, but if she was really being honest, she didn't know if she would ever be ready to look at it imprinted on her own skin.

Sure, she had seen it on others' arms, most of them being her family, her two friends, and the blond boy who her parents wished for her to marry. Maybe, she thought, that it would have been different if she had gotten the mark under different circumstances if she hadn't got it while pretending to be someone she was most definitely not.

It was to protect those who she cared about, she would tell herself again and again, even at the time when she hadn't agreed to the proposition she had been given. But then again, was there really a point when the people she was doing it for had no idea what she was doing- and were putting themselves in danger anyway.

But deep down, she knew very well that there was no point to think this through when she had already stepped into the path of sharp thorns disguised as a road decorated with white rose petals laid out for her.

And she knew very well that she couldn't keep her eyes shut and hide in her bathroom forever and in the end, she'd have to open her eyes and step out, onto the thorns, and do what she had to do.

And so she did open her now slightly dull grey eyes, and through her blurred vision, her gaze landed on her forearm, where her skin was now terribly pale, but that wasn't the thing she was worried about the most.

On her forearm, drawn in a somber black, was a colossal skull with an open mouth, from where a snake protruded out, winding around and forming a number eight, its mouth looking like it's ready to bite, and the seventeen-year-old wished for a moment that it would and put her out of her misery.

Water was still pouring down like rain over the girl as she brought a shaky hand to run her fingers over the tattoo she hated very much.

But as soon as the tip of her fingers brushed over the permanent ink on her forearm, she immediately retreated her hand and brought it to cover her mouth as she let out a choked sob, her eyes still fixed on the mark she wanted to get rid of.

But as the tears finally fell down and the girl leaned back against the wall sprinkled with water droplets, aching for some kind of comfort, because the leather jacket she didn't own wasn't helping as much as she thought it would.

The courage didn't come back for a very long time, and she had lost track of time for how long she had been sitting there, but when it did, and she finally turned off the shower and got up, she didn't leave the bathroom, but just stood in front of her mirror, which still had the bloodstains decorating it.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, as water dripped on the floor beneath her, as the black skull and snake flashed before her eyes every time she would drop her gaze down for a moment and her eyes would fix on her left arm, and as tear tracks stained her face but were hard to tell apart from the water dripping down because she knew that there was no turning back, and the pit of misery was waiting for her at the end of the thorned road.

•

sounds fun