He traced the cut on his lip, then dug in with his tongue.
It stung. Badly. And it was foolish too, because no one rubbed salt in their wounds, but anything, even if a different pain, was a welcome distraction.
He'd managed to come home without a visible limp, pulling his left leg back to meet his right leg, hurried to muffle the strike of pain up his spine and legs.
Amir Agha. It was all for him. His smile, eyes lit up, and Hassan could imagine the glow of his friend's face when he would arrive home, walk into the lounge room, the brilliant blue kite held in his hands, his well-earned trophy, and finally, finally finding his Baba's approval.
But is a kite worth this?
No, it was. Amir was everything; his teacher, his best friend, his brother, his King. Hassan was still Amir's prince (but was he really?), his best friend (out of all his other friends?), his servant (his prince and servant?), his subject, and his strongest soldier.
The numbness in his lower legs made him move; he flinched immediately as the dull throb in his back came back to life.
So that made Assef the villain in their story.
Hassan was young, naive, small, uneducated, but he knew the word to describe what was done to him: rape. Snippets of dirty comments from older men was enough for him to understand (because people liked boys as much as they liked girls), even with him being a tainted Hazara (the woman he was to call mother was testament to the that).
He'd been broken in half, and it would take a long, long time for his small, almost malnourished body to heal; his throat constricted, a sob forming at the back of his throat. He admitted, it would take a long time before he would be able to hold his slingshot up again, and pull the band back. Not for himself, and it pained him to admit, perhaps not even for Amir agha.
"No Hazaran bitch deserves the pleasure of my seed, but I'll make an exception for you."
It was still inside him. He could feel it because it burned, burned with blood and damaged nerves and so deep inside him ("I won't hold back for you, just for you, you little shit"), it was a worm, eating away at his insides and digging deeper inside him. The thick, stringy white hadn't stop leaking out of him (it will never leave him) and it terrified him more than the thought that the blood wouldn't stop for hours.
When Ali had returned home, limping into their hut after clearing up his duties, Ali hadn't noticed a thing, not the thick smell of semen and the metallic undertone of blood, not the sight of darkened pants cast away in the laundry basket, and certainly not the glazed look in Hassan's eyes, or the smaller (weaker) voice he replied his salam with. He couldn't decide if it was a good thing, because it hurt, oh Allah, it hurt, but so did everything else, and extra fuss over it wasn't worth paining Amir.
Like Father, like Son. Crippled, limping home; did the rape make Hassan a cripple too? Was his father, grim-faced, mocked by all, ever raped too?
His vision blurred. His father probably had, because any deformity could be overlooked. His throat constricted and new tears well up in his eyes, because the thought that anyone would ever be pained, like this, his already pained father, or even his mother-
Or worst of all, Amir agha, to feel the burn along his back and in every movement, feel the thick, hot trickle of blood, and smell it, disgusted with himself, taste the bitter dirt still in his mouth left over from where he cried into the ground (but still quiet, always be quiet, don't make a big fuss over pain, you'll get used to it), enough to make him gag and his stomach to convulse, and feel the worms of drying semen along his thighs, scalding his entrance, displayed across his back in trails of white like a mark of ownership, becoming a part of his skin.