Four drabbles, subtracting themes from Plato's Tetralogies. Yes, I am that much of a geek.

For a particular someone who never thought I'd read the whole of Tokyo Babylon as a writing requisite anyway. Get well soon, dove. Mostly Subaru POV. Having never written for this fandom before, I claim the right to take cover behind the easier perspective.

-

Euthyphro

- the nature of piety.

The wrist is too thin, and the balance weak. And he wastes himself, child-sigil-of-heat-on-the-back-of-his-hand, with bleeding thighs and legs that are ash white to the knee amidst stillborn incantations and whispered offerings: Alpha and Theta, albumen and placenta.

Afterwards, when the deed has been done - when he has violated every rule of the summons, every virtue of his craft, every rite of purification – he realizes that he will never wield an ofuda properly, not again, not really. His new magic is Seishirou, and mourning cloth dipped in wine, the smell of cheap cigarettes and a wholesome religion of rape.

-

The Apology

- a judgment of truth.

His vanity is a hall of mirrors cracked silent and still by bloodied fingerprints and the blink of a pentagram-scryed price tag. Hesitant.

He is not beautiful when he comes to her rescue, her name lost between feverish lips and shallow praise. Circumstance.

He is not beautiful in demi-monde addiction and unsavoury 'dates', in lies of –

" I want you. I love you."

-- in hasty, vile sex, the kisses viler, an afterthought of heat. Pretence.

He is beautiful when judgment comes, her heart pinned to his door, the fragrance of it devil, and the devil of it cherry. Owned.

-

Crito

- resisting evil by any means other than persuasion is evil.

"I don't believe you exist." They talk over wine, and dine over corpses, and sometimes their contradictions are a travesty of perfect, isolated apprehension. Concepts are never lost in translation, because words are just words and relative and obscure –

- "So you never killed Hokuto. She never existed either."

- and kisses are vicious torture, all abnegation, all teeth -

"What are you doing?"

- and angels fall as they fly, for hands push and hands pull and two-eyes-now-one hungers -

"Converting you."

- and for the one night, it's just a black fairytale that never happened.

"…I love you."

-

Phaedo

- the pursuit of afterlife

It is always on trains, and always one station, and the truce of their meetings lies a dormant beast; in the end, they live the same way.

Subaru begrudges him sometimes the odd status quo: the blood and the bones, the death and the dice, the words and the wards; interdiction and healing.

Their definitions.

They are cigarettes glittering cancer infestation, death wishes Wished upon the other, ripped ribbons to open Christmas presents, meaningless and deadly, apathetic and reversed, and you cannot defy their half-kill-you–half–fuck-me glances separately.

Afterwards, when the train has stopped, Subaru can only read dictionaries.