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Dante reminded him too much of his family.
Their words after a tough battle – to him and all the other Sinners – were a rare source of genuine praise in The City, amnesia keeping their ticks and tocks free of any ulterior motives or carefully planned manipulation. It reminded him of his mother, how she’d lift up even his smallest achievements and insist on celebrating every milestone he passed. Though, to hear the same praise he got for high marks on tests or getting into his desired schools be heaped on him as he ended lives while defying death was... odd.
Not disliked though, that unmistakable want to do more and do better for them was electrifying, feeding into the urges he once hoped to starve out.
Their head was like his father’s, in the corner of his eye. A circular face devoid of emotion – but only technically. Words and actions were so much louder than a look or a smile, unnoticed habits and little motions told much more truth than a face. He wished be saw it earlier – how his family stayed the same despite how they changed, how his father always scratched his chin even when he lost it. But whenever he looked closer, moved them out of his peripherals, those overplayed memories of a man he once loved faded away without a trace, to later return in his nightmares.
Their habits were like his sister's, waiting til the dead of night to write down everything interesting they could think of from the passed day, hiding it from watchful eyes as they poured their oh-so-full heart onto pages and pixels. He used to read his sisters diary, on occasion, sneaking into her room to read about her everyday joys and woes. And yet, even as they tapped away on nightwatch with him - convinced by his rather shoddy acting that he was fast asleep – he always felt the same urge. To peel off the layers and masks made to keep oneself safe from The City, to know them in their entirety, to add another brushstroke to the painting of ‘Dante’ in his mind.
And yet. And yet and yet and yet.
They were not his family, those whose death lay upon the hands of himself a few years younger, who he saw grow and change with every day he did as the years went by too quickly for comfort.
But they were his manager – and they looked out for him to the best of their [limited] ability. And just maybe, that was enough to give him someone to go back to at the end of the day.
He smiled to himself shyly in his fake sleep. He had chosen to sign that contract, to become one in a band of sinners. But Sinclair never the one who pulled him out of hell would ever mean more than that. Would be someone worth caring for.