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His light wavers in his Father’s presence and power, now stood to face him and not kept beside him as seraphs should. Not anymore.
He feels. He knows he is called—never mind that two of his wings almost always cover his head, he still hears them all—cold and heartless and emotionless but nonetheless he feels. The warmth is gone, only leaving the cold. What was once comfort now burns.
His trial comes to pass in a blur. He knows the inevitable verdict. He had witnessed trials like these before.
His closest brothers cry, wailing and pleading. Yet he does not turn to face them. He does not shift. He faces his punishment. He has never been one to cross Father. Not until now.
“The verdict is thus,” the Words ring with certainty, “the seraph Tobirama shall be cast out! Never to return! For his crimes of treason! Of consorting with the fallen!”
He is banished. His ears ring in the silence in the wake of the Words. He has never cried in his existence but he feels them now. He had known what would pass his Father’s lips but it still leaves him hollow but for the string connecting him somewhere not here.
His Father’s hand rests on his head. One last time. Pain he should have expected lances through his being, it burns.
He opens his eyes even through it all—he is a soldier, he was made to handle it. The red Lines of Binding and of Banishment crawl through his skin, his very being, winding and weaving, leaving throbbing pain in its wake. It leaves him weak and dim but still, he stays firm. He’d seen them before but not as extensive as this.
The Lines end in three lines on his face. Reminders that tell the story of his failings for all the worlds to see.
Then he is cast out. Thrown from the skies of his home in Heaven, with one last glimpse of his crying brothers—they have always felt more than he does—before they fade from view. He never even been able to say a proper farewell and it will haunt him, he knows.
He falls.
He winds his hand around the thread wound around his essence as if in prayer with all the strength left in him.
His eyes catch sight of his six wings, his falling body still facing the heavens, and sees luminous white burn into iridescent black. The flames turn the flavor of his heavenly essence into one of the fallen.
His halo cracks. Solid horns rise from his white-haired head, nearly as painful as the Seals of Banishment engraved into his skin, pierced into every crevice of his once-holy soul. He knows not of their color.
He cannot move, the Binding and the Banishment had sapped his strength, he feels no more powerful than a newly-born, floundering fledgling.
He cannot fly.
An unmistakable inferno blazes through his senses, just as he nears the earth. The thread in his hand tugs at his being.
His beloved is near.
He has not lost his ability to feel, it seems. His soul warms and fills despite the Binding and Banishment that had left him cold and hollow.
He closes his eyes. The fallen is ready to catch him as he falls.