waned and waxed with your interests!!! that’s such a beautiful way of putting it :3

ooh interesting question... i don't think so!! i think while there's always the chance for tropes to fall back on and become cliches, there are also always potential fresh takes on them. i also don't really have any tropes that i Will Never read or write.... i'll give anything a chance!! it's always about the execution imo and there are dozens of ways to turn something you don't like into something you do.

"I wanted it to be your name so badly."

“I remember,” Yor says, voice warm. She doesn’t tell him, not then and not now, that she, too, wanted that. Some small part of her. Such an awful thought. It’s a job of a parent, a sister, a caretaker, to hope that a child will one day leave the nest, so to speak. Prepare them to take on the rest of the world, then step back to let them do just that. Wrong of her to hope, wish, pray that he would be tied down. That the mark of her name on his skin would mean something. I exist, it would say, even if only to Yuri. I mean something to someone. I am real. 

Yuri doesn’t meet her eyes. He’s worrying the pastry he ordered into small pieces, tearing it with a kind of anxious organization. Lining up the crumbs, one by one. She wouldn’t be surprised if he were counting them in his head: twos, tens, twenties. When he finally speaks, it’s so quiet that she thinks she’s misheard.

“I met her.”

Amelie has long since wondered about the relationship between food, maker, and eater. Dreamed, occasionally, of simpler times: making something with her own hands and putting bits of herself in in the process. Someone eating it and knowing, understanding her in the process. But now, such a thought no longer appeals to her. The opposite, in fact. She would rather die than let Felix eat anything she had made--let him touch all the anger and hatred and rot festering within her. 

The line moves, and with it, so too does Amelie. Off the street and into the bakery--soft, cozy, smelling of bread and vanilla. So strong she can nearly taste it. A pit in her stomach, growling and demanding to be fed. Curiosity feels a lot like hunger, sometimes; simply another urge that demands to be fed. Against her will, her mouth begins to water. So many years with her husband--told what to say, how to act, and above all, what to eat--and still, her body pays it no mind. Does whatever it wants. Stronger than her mind, in that way. 

what the hell :') you are so sweet... and you know exactly where to hit me... i LOVE talking writing...

ooh this is a good question. broadly speaking, if we look at things from a story structure perspective, it's important to understand what an ending really is. and a beginning. and a story itself. LOL

there's this advice that floats around often that you should start your story as close to the 'beginning' (which usually refers to the inciting incident) as possible. i think that can apply to endings as well - you kind of want to end things as close to the 'end' as possible. so what does that really mean?

 "It isn't like you to call out of the blue like this."

"Not like you, either," says Yuri, and unwittingly, she's thrown back into that night. Stumbling, fingers so cold, alone, dialing on the payphone. A voice coming through the phone pressed to her ear. Stark black lines illuminated by moonlight. It takes her a moment to realize that Yuri's still talking. She schools her expression into something more neutral. Reaches with those cold, cold fingers for her Sister script. 

"Do you remember my sixteenth birthday?" he's saying now. 

"Of course," Yor says immediately, because she remembers everything about Yuri. She'd taken on a few extra jobs to be able to afford a present for him, something that she wanted to make sure that he would like. She'd gone out and bought all the ingredients for a cake, attempted to time everything so that it would be ready exactly by midnight. And it was, but the sound he'd made when his mark had begun to come in, the way his hands had pressed to his ribcage as though in pain, had sufficiently distracted her. The cake had come out burnt, though knowing her, that's what it would have been like anyway. 

Silly Yor, Yuri's voice says in her head, repeating words from so long ago. Ghosts aren't real!

No, not a ghost. A threat. Those eyes--calculating, cataloging. Yor's nails dig into her palms. She's seeing things. It's not fair to Loid or Anya to let anything affect their life like this. She came into this arrangement a certain way, and she's going to keep being that way. 

"Fine," Loid says after a moment. He clears his throat before taking a sip of coffee. Waits for one second, two, three, before he adds, "The coffee is delicious. Thank you, Yor."

With the feeling of heat rising in her cheeks, so too does relief in Yor's chest. This, she knows how to respond to. But before she can, Loid shifts, sits up straighter. There's the slightest gap between the top two buttons of his pajama shirt. Hardly a few centimeters of skin; nothing worth even a second glance.

And yet.

Yor stares at that gap. At the way his throat bobs when he swallows the coffee made by her hands. At the unmarred skin, so very pale.

She doesn't know Loid's first wife's name. It must have been tragic, watching his mark fade along with her. A part of him, in more ways than one, gone forever. How it must have happened: graying, scratching, a slow disappearance? Or, simply, gone? A knife thrown, a life taken.