Prompt: "Oh fuck, oh FUCK." for that thing you mentioned a while ago with sepulchure mentoring ash

The wall had been unkind to Ash the first time he'd been thrown into it, and nothing had changed on the seventeenth.

Everything in him ached. There were minor cuts all over his arms, as well as some nasty bruises forming on his abdomen, and while he wasn't sure he'd taken any damage there, he couldn't feel the fingers on his left hand any more.

"Get up."

He strained to lift his head and look at the cause of all his current suffering. His teacher, a dour giant of a man in a large brown travelers' coat that Ash had never seen him remove, no matter how hot it was. The man had introduced himself as Bastion, but Ash was certain that was not his real name. As it stood, the man agreed to train him in all things knightly, "until he got bored". Ash had thought it to be a pretty good arrangement until he found out just how harsh a teacher Bastion was.

They were currently on the combat section of the curriculum. Today's lesson was fighting opponents much, much stronger than you are.

Unarmed.

Ash propped himself up on his elbows as he tried to lift his legs from underneath him. It didn't work and his arms gave out from underneath him.

He could hear his mentor making a "hmm"ing noise over the sounds of his own labored breathing, but just barely. There was movement to his right, but he couldn't see, there was so much pain he couldn't even keep his eyes open.

He could feel something pressing against his stomach, eliciting a wince and a labored groan of pain, before two rough hands impatiently flipped him over.

"!"

A sharp pain in his back robbed him of the cry of pain in his throat, but that was a small matter. Those same hands were pressing down on his bruises, aggravating the already sore muscles and bringing with them stabs of dull pain and haze.

"…Oh fuck."

He was dimly aware of one of the hands moving from his stomach to his shoulders, violently shaking it in an attempt to rouse him.

"Oh fuck, Kid! Wake up, we need to get you to a medic!"

He cracked an eye open and was able to mouth a "what?" before the movement proved too much and his head fell back down again.

Then blackness.

…..

He awoke in a cheap bed surrounded by white walls, Bastion leaning irritatedly against the one nearest to him.

His throat was dry, and his voice was cracked, but he managed to croak out a "What happened?"

Bastion didn't seem surprised to see him awake, and shifted his arms like a bird ruffling their feathers. He didn't look at Ash when he spoke.

"You were bleeding internally. Too many hits to the wall. I wasn't thinking."

I wasn't thinking. That was probably as good an apology as he would ever get from his teacher. The unspoken it won't happen again was reassuring.

"…So I passed out then?"

"Yeah."

"…Did the doctor say how long it would be before I can leave?"

"Not long. The bleeding was mostly in your muscles. A few weeks at most."

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"So I guess this is goodbye then? I mean lying in a hospital bed is pretty boring."

A smile, an honest to god smile found its way to Bastion's face.

"Kid, did you really think you could get rid of me so easily? Nah, I'm not leaving. Not on your life."

NOTE: I come up with AUs when I'm bored. One of them being "Imagine if Ash stumbled across Sepulchure during the timeskip and goaded him into teaching him knight stuff without knowing who he was?"