AN- Hey guys, haven't written in a while. This is very au, and very T rated, may need to be pushed up. This basically runs along the lines that the Fire Nation won the war, and that the women of Ba Sing Se were forced into doing certain things. Please review! ATLA is not mine. WARNINGS: references of prostitution/ historic Jinko.
Being an Earth Kingdom peasant came with a lot of things, Jin supposed. Of the list that could run along the length of Ba Sing Se, the most unbecoming was the smell. Not the odour, the smell. The essence of a person always reveals their histories, their roots, their family. As Jin trailed through the streets she mused that smells moulded, they crowded around tea shops and gossip spots, they haunted every gutter, but they never disappeared.
When Ba Sing Se fell, not the first time before she was born, not the second time near her love for Lee, but the third time, when the hope evaporated quicker then a ostrich horses's water on a hot day; Ba Sing Se's smell was ruined. Spices, and flavours, and blood, and fire and fear collided with the smell of poverty. It covered, but did not remove.
When the soldier came unarmed with her name and a number, Jin did not struggle. Making a fuss was the province of Fire Nation nobles, not Earth Kingdom peasants. She was loaded onto the back of the - what was it called? The machine, so far advanced, so Fire Nation, and taken to a place far away.
She waited in line until it was her turn to be thrust before a women who had lines on her face, that told not a story, but a lifetime. Jin nodded at her details, but the thing that pre-occupied her was the woman's smell. Not natural, not native. It did not reveal where she was from, it did not taint the image she portrayed. It invaded the air and colonised the oxygen in the room, and Jin wondered whether they would do that to her too. Take away her smell.
Hours later, after more time in a bath then needed, after she was doused in perfume that made her nostrils pinch, Jin discovered that was exactly the plan.
She could still smell herself though; tea and the lower ring, filth and family.
When Jin sold a bit of her virtue for her own survival; she woke up with aching thighs and coin on her bedside table.
The high-ranking soldier moved to leave, but first hesitated at the door. As if he had forgotten she spoke his language; he stuttered, seemed confused, and shook his head. ''Where are you from?'' he muttered, as if she was just above the dirt he walked on, but underneath the sole of his boots.
Jin smiled. He could still smell her too.
Please review! Maiko-Is-Forever.