Disciples of the Gusu Lan sect are carved from the same stone as the mountains that nestle Cloud Recesses. Their first great ancestors were a pair of fairy stones, brought to life by the tears of the low people of Gusu, and moved to action-- if not emotion-- by their prayers. Even after generations of marriage with average people, that deeply-mined otherness remained ingrained in the clan. Everyone says so. Why even the most junior disciples are able to master their natures to an almost flawless degree, and something very close to pride bubbles up in Sect Leader Lan Qiren at the reverential whispers of the other clans:
"Look, two pillars of them, six disciples deep, and not a single scent-- what control they show!"
Gusu Lan disciples never experience the types of understandable-- yet uncouth-- incidents that plague the outside world and occasionally even mar the tranquility of the other sects. Indeed, such is their reputation that when tensions ignite amongst their peers in the cultivation world, it is the mysterious and unknowable Lan who intercede, their hidden statuses allowing them to operate calmly and coolly outside of the politics of gender.
No, the Gusu Lan are indifferent stone. Training and asceticism and mastery of their qi holds them above the biology that inflames others. No one can last long, snarling and nipping against the firm arms of a peer that they can't scent out. After all, a fight between alphas (too common, even amongst their polished brethren) or a mating claim denied-- that is a political matter, as much as it is a biological one.
An alpha interceding might be seen as a threat-- might further stoke fires already banking beyond control. Power can quell, but it can also call down desperate fury-- just ask the Wen clan. When you add in cross-sect considerations of status and right, well, sending in an alpha to fix things is as likely to hinder as help.
A beta is the most neutral, but neutrality in and of itself can make certain personalities bristle, especially if the belligerents are already feeling the niggling awareness of shame. Cultivation relies on control, and sometimes a level-headed beta is nothing more than a slap in the face for the alphas that have lost their rationality.
An omega-- well, that's the most uncertain of all, isn't it? The right scent, the right pressure point, and nothing can tame a roomful of alphas so thoroughly, but it's always a blade's edge from turning into a mindless instinct to claim or posture, and more than one tragedy has been birthed by such well-intentioned but poorly-planned intervention.
But the Lan clan? With their perfectly masked scents and robes that sit high and tight against any possible mating marks? They are always unknown, and their intervention can only be met with shamefaced apologies by those who could be as controlled as they-- but are not. They stride into chaos as pillars of unblemished white, and the world is cowed before them.
Yes, the Gusu Lan are made of stone; they are the envy of all.
Except when it comes to marriage and mating, but the Lan's tendency towards asceticism and their infamous single-mindedness ensures that such struggles are a rare downside to the greatness they receive in turn. So says Lan Qiren, and who can say he's wrong? After all, everyone knows that "The Lan only love once." By the time their genders are revealed-- in private to their sworn and only mates-- what does it matter? Sure, it complicates matters greatly until that point, but the Lan have enough precepts and protocols that by the end of negotiations, no one is ever at all sure of which parts are Lan tradition and which parts are clues to the intended's gender. In this manner, the Lan guard their secrets as well as they guard their scents.
...
And if such careful restraint leaves certain jade-faced heirs aching with a longing that they can only acknowledge on their days of sequester, when biology overtakes good breeding? Well-- Sect Leader says it's worth it, and he is most surely correct in this, as in all things. There is an honor in their silent suffering-- a nobility in allowing their cultivation, rather than their carnal desires, to guide them. They must simply be patient and peerless as ever, and eventually, their mates will present themselves and the proper protocols will be followed.
Their father allowed the Lan clan's teachings to lapse, and look at what happened to him. Once you give yourself over to the beast, there is only shame and bad endings awaiting you. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji have known this since they were too young to grip their swords properly, and they know it now. They will suffer and wait and take quiet comfort in the control they exercise. They will endure. They will not make the mistakes of their father. That is what it means to be peerless. That is what it means to be Lan.
That is what breaks Lan Xichen's heart, as he stands at the gate to the Unclean Realms and can give no answer to a question of world-stilling import. It is what shatters him, years later, when he thinks of what an honest answer might have won them.
That is what breaks the world, when Wei Wuxian ambles into Cloud Recesses with an easy smile and eyes that would be described as pure sex-- if Lan Wangji let himself think about such shocking things. Which he doesn't of course, because he is a Lan, and he is controlled. It is what will carve shattered notes of unanswered prayer into the night for over a decade when the young master thinks he has lost his chance forever.
Still, there are things that Lan Qiren's teachings cannot prepare a heart for, and they are all wrapped up in an infuriatingly cocky boy named Wei Ying. Heavens help us all.
"Ha, everyone acts like it's such a secret, but you're an alpha Lan Zhan, I could tell right away. It's lucky you are-- otherwise, you'd already be hopelessly in love with me, you know. Hey, what's with that face?"
---
Wei Wuxian. Please, answer me. Answer me and I will tell you back anything you want to know.
Lan Wangji stares out the window, ears coloring with a twinge of embarrassment at the pleading notes playing out from his guqin. There is Inquiry, and then there is this desperate and personal pleading. If his fellow cultivators heard such notes-- He shakes his head. Even after all these years, hope and shame beat against his breast, waiting for an answer that has never come. This continued silence, this soft rejection, colors Lan Wangji's memories of the boy he had wanted to die for, until he's not sure if Wei Wuxian ever even liked him at all. But still, each night that he finds himself alone, he asks. He pleads. Sometimes, he breaks down and gets drunk and pretends that he's not achingly alone. He is his father's son, after all. Perhaps he was always destined for a tragic and unrequited love. Perhaps this silence is just another way Wei Wuxian is playing the role he's been given.
Wei Ying, answer me and I will give you anything.
These are dangerous promises to send out into the world of spirits and ghosts, but Lan Wangji cannot find it in him to care. The only risk is to himself, after all-- the junior disciples have been dispatched to Mo Manor to deal with a flurry of walking corpses, and he is little more than a lookout. In this nondescript tavern, he has time to be irrational and selfish, as long as no others see. And he knows, as each note of desperation dies in the calm night air, that he will get no response.
There is never a response-- never so much as a whiff of recognition thrumming against the pleas that he sends out into the shadow realm. He was not wanted when Wei Ying lived, and he is not wanted now that he lies dead. Still, he knows that tomorrow night, he will send out the same prayers again. For him, this is all there is. To stop would be to admit that his soulmate-- in this life and the next-- is truly gone from him, and he cannot bear that. So he tortures himself with unanswered strums.
A flare lights up the night in soft but urgent Lan blue, and Lan Wangji tucks his heart back into his sleeve. He tamps down on all the things he never said, stands astride Bichen, and becomes Hanguang-Jun. By the time he arrives at the tiled rooftop, he is firmly back in character as the strict but fair teacher and peerless jade that the world expects him to be.
He is unwanted and unloved, but he is needed, and he contents himself that that is enough. He stands on the somewhat shabby roof of the inner courtyard and allows his guqin, Wangji, a purpose beyond his lonely calls into the ether. He plays and the fierce corpses are vanquished. One, two, three-- so easy, though he can see why his disciples had trouble. There is something more here-- an echo of something dark and familiar. He motions and the cursed sword flies into his hands. His students ask questions, and he answers them with no hesitation.
There is a ritual here, in being reminded of all the ways the world bends to him in the shadow of more rejection from the one being he has never been able to control. And then he inspects the energy more closely, and that neatly-ordered compartmentalization starts to crack.
Not just a fierce corpse. Not just a sword spirit.
"The Stygian Tiger Amulet." An echo of Wei Ying, at last. How fitting that this first stirring of the one he seeks would be shrouded in blood and death. How shameful that his first thought is terrified hope, rather than revulsion. And if his words are tinged with feeling and if his eyes widen with barely-acknowledged hope, his students have the good grace to misattribute the show of emotion to terrible reminders of the Nightless City.
Then Lan Jingyi gives voice to the hope that Lan Wangji has not been able to admit, even as he spent sixteen years combing for traces of his lost love: "Maybe the Yiling Patriarch didn't die." Lan Wangji's hand shakes, almost imperceptibly, as the words move through the blood-tanged air like a caress.
That sense-- that rolling familiarity that crept up with the mists of the night-- maybe the Yiling Patriarch isn't dead. While Lan Wangji wars with himself over the destructiveness of such hope and his soft relief that his disciples don't spit out Wei Ying's title like a curse-- (he doesn't know that he could bear it, though of course he could), there is movement.
Movement and Lan Wangji is flying without a thought other than-- is it him? It can't be him, it shouldn't be him-- Lan Wangji saw him fall with his own two eyes, felt him die with his own battered soul-- but still, he flies. He flies and he hopes and he's grateful that the house staff is sequestered and the disciples are slower, because when he lands he can't control the desperation that surges through him or the scent he sends out, begging for his mate to return to him.
Of course, there is no answer. There wouldn't be, even if Wei Ying was returned. They were not mated. Wei Wuxian had not wanted him. His scent would do nothing to compel his half-imagined quarry. Lan Wangji looks down the deserted street, sends a prayer to the heavens, and collects himself. By the time he returns to his students, he is peerless and scentless jade once more.
---
Several streets down, a panting Wei Wuxian catches a whiff of something familiar and impossible in the air. He's experienced this scent once before, in a dream, perhaps? But he does not know anyone in Mo Village, beyond Lan Zhan, and everyone knows Gusu Lan keep themselves scentless.
It's a shame though-- Wei Wuxian finds he rather likes the scraps of sandalwood and need that waft past him, especially when he takes leave of his senses and pretends it belongs to a certain untouchable heir. It's even funnier to imagine that the sharp whiff of desire is a call to him in particular. Funny and...enticing, oddly enough. Wei Wuxian giggles as he steps further into the shadows.
"Oh, Young Master Mo, it seems you left some of your madness behind when you departed. Not very nice, but I suppose I'll kill your enemies anyway. Seriously though, next time you should write a list. And take all your crazy with you. It will go badly for us if I decide to start stalking Lan Zhan, and then how will you get your revenge?"