a/n. wrote this a while ago. decided to post. (even if there aren't very many works in this fandom...) Takes place during the scene where Assef fights Amir.

disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Oh, the irony.

Inside the scramble of spitting blood, and knuckles that shine in the light, there was a thick layer of a terrible bitterness. It was humid and scraped against their bleeding bones. If only that Hazara child from long ago could see him now, if only that Hassan could be standing here, if only his best friend could have been watching with his small but beautiful eyes.

Amir relished the very thought as he crumbled in his own pool of blood.

Blue eyes.

Punched.

But the eyes of a Hazara child stabbed harder.

Sohrab stood with the stiff slingshot in his hand, the wood rough and determined. Assef struggled under the weight of this mockery. Laced fingers tightened. Behold the second generation, behold the son of Hassan. Ready to do what never was done. His small frame shook, mighty and scared. The music Assef had put on dimly continued. Perhaps it had slowed down, no one was really sure.

Amir remembered what Rahim Khan had said. Somehow, he remembered through the gasps of breaths and tears and anguishing pains. He remembered how he had said he had accomplished what others could not in their writing. Irony.

At that very moment, Amir was sure there was a God.

And he was also positive that this God, if he was really there, was a good writer.

The best of them all.

Because surely, who else could create this perfect irony? That the son of Hassan, Sohrab, would be standing over this criminal with a slingshot, the memory of an alley and a pomegranate tree seeping through it? Amir laughed at the idea. Of this torn and burnt book this God had created. And he knew that this was just a page of his many works. This was just a ripped page with dried ink and misspelled words and dirt stains that the world had forgotten about—a bleeding country called Afghanistan.

Indeed, only a God could have done this.

A paradox was written with splattered blood across the walls, across their dark skin, in their dreams.

But Amir ran away with the child in his hand, collecting the bits and pieces of a book and a regret meant for Hassan, all the way back to the path of being good again.

For him, a thousand times over.