Marked For War | Self-para
Andromeda doesn’t expect it to hurt. Bella assured her it wouldn’t, but every summons sends a burning sensation down the length of her fore-arm. Not as important as her older sister and far less skilled in the kinds of tasks that are in demand, Andromeda only feels it every week or so, when a full audience is required. How often matters little to her. She doesn’t want it to happen at all. Bellatrix is happy to serve her master. Andromeda is not. Therein lies the difference.
Even when it doesn’t sting, it aches. Bella hadn’t told her about that either, but Andromeda doesn’t press the matter. Just admitting it to herself leaves her feeling weaker than she’s comfortable with. Besides, she’s afraid she already has an answer to that one. It isn’t her arm that hurts. It’s her heart. Through the years, her soulmark has brought her comfort, pride, and finally love. This mark fills her with regret, but it’s too late for that. There’s certainly no going back now, not from this. She smothers the feeling each time it rears its ugly head.
The Dark Lord seems to think he can call on his supporters any minute of the day or night.
It happens when she’s trying to fix one of the strange muggle devices Ted brought into the house, smashed by Bellatrix during her visit - quite by accident, her sister claims. She tried to fix it with magic but something isn’t quite right, it doesn’t sound the same and Andromeda can’t work out why. Frustration already built in her chest, it erupts at the burn of the dark mark - or perhaps its merely the reminder. Hissing from the pain, cursing under her breath, she sets the device down before she can do any more damage to it.
It happens while she’s with Ted. It takes weeks after she is branded to bring herself to undress completely. Ashamed of the mark, she gives Ted as few chances to look upon it as possible. No spell under the sun will remove it. It won’t be concealed by anything Andromeda possesses in her bathroom cabinet, which - admittedly - isn’t much. The Dark Lord’s mark simply won’t budge. The skull and serpent are branded on her skin forever.
Dark magic is a bitch.
She learns its almost impossible to purchase provocative lingerie that also covers the arms, and hires a seamstress to make the garments specially. Young and newly wed to the man she loves completely, it takes immense effort on her part not to give in and accept this is what her body looks like now. The initial months of their marriage are not what she wants them to be, free and unburdened by the world, filled with the innocent bliss of lovers who got everything they wanted. By taking the mark she invited the world in and now its an unwelcome guest, one who simply will not leave.
Eventually Ted wins her over. Ted always wins her over. He kisses every inch of her skin, showing special care to the name written where lower back became left hip. The name which bound them with more than their hearts, a name entirely his own, Edward Tonks. Andromeda almost thinks it’ll all be alright, that the second mark on her skin won’t have changed anything. But she doesn’t miss the pain and unbidden disgust that flashes across his face when he catches sight of it, the tired sigh that escapes his lips and the pointed way he wraps her maimed arm around his neck so he doesn’t have to look at it. Ted has never spared her from his true thoughts and opinions on anything. This is no exception.
Years pass and Andromeda still makes an effort to hide it. She curls her arm in the sheets so Ted doesn’t have the sight of it forced on him like so much else in their lives, so he doesn’t feel an onslought of disgust when he’s looking at her. So she doesn’t have to feel guilty at the woman she’s become in the fight to be with him. She’s learned to mask the pain, to ignore a summons. She might bear the mark but she will not abide the Dark Lord as if he is the designer of destiny himself. Some things are too important. Ted is one of them.
When they have sex, its often angry, because they are. Their bodies are a tale in themselves and its a tale of both love and war.
It happens when she’s making tea. She’s a mother now, almost used to the dark mark but not quite. With a daughter to care for the stakes are considerably higher. Andromeda finds herself standing on a bed of smashed china, her left hand squeezed tight into a fist, her knuckles white. From the high-chair, Dora is crying and Andromeda cannot reach her to comfort her without cutting the soles of her feet. She does it anyway. For Nymphadora, Andromeda will suffer any measure of pain without flinching. For her daughter she will do anything.