callan lambert / d9 / cb (fin)

He was born with a pearlescent heart but had it changed into a steel-encrusted thing.

But, Callan knows that it hasn't truly become steel; he knows that he’s just gotten better at hiding his softness, keeping it tightly masqueraded under the veil of a cut-throat assassin because soft isn't what Lamberts are destined to be.

Because even lambs have teeth.

That’s what the Lamberts are: things full of teeth that have a bite to them, things that appear soft-boned but take away their fleeces and one would find the wolves hidden underneath. They are born with the innocent look of songbirds but taught to be hawks and falcons instead. To be a Lambert, really, is to wring out one’s own delicateness to death – but Callan hasn’t truly done that, has he?

But, he is still gentle and soft away from his sibling’s prying eyes, such as the café with the rose-colored wallpapers on the outskirts of the district that he would go to play his hidden violin in at times, such as are the dove feathers he secretly collects and leaves on the bodies of his victims as an homage to this secret softness. Such as that one boy he let go from death, despite being tasked to kill him, because he was weary of the way fresh blood singed his palms.

His secret is a box kept in the dark under his bed and it’s only a matter of time before one of his siblings stumble upon it.

Gasping through the last throes of her death, one of his victims had clawed at his collar and asked with her dying, hoarse breath once: “Why do you do this?” The blade-wound on her chest stained his hand red. Callan wished she had said something more sentimental, more complex than a question that had an answer to it a beat later: “because it’s what I was taught to.”

Because this is what Lamberts do to live, using tokens of blood and murder to make beasts and monsters out of their gentle selves.


Callan Lambert's secret is a rabbit quivering in the bushes and it's only a matter of time before it gets flushed out by the wolves.