Chapter Text
Keith had been the champion of the fight pits for a few years, and the crowd loved him. He had to ensure that the crowd continued loving him.
He was the reason people escaped the fighting pits alive. He had a secret passage that people used to escape during fights, and he would fake their deaths. There were enough corpses in the cells that it wasn't impossible.
But Keith hated that he couldn't save people from being tortured by the galra.
One day, they brought in 3 new people, one with a relatively new surgical wrapping around their shoulder and the metal of a bionic arm peeking out from the holes in their shirt. As usual, they were brought by his cell before usually being transferred to another on the block. He waited till he heard the guards walk away, opening his eyes and coming out of the shadows. "Well, well, now let's look at the fresh meat. I'm the champion of this place. This place is not a place to be too trusting of your surroundings. They call me the monster" They looked bewildered and scared, as they should be. He put his finger against his lips in a 'be quiet' motion. They all looked confused until a guard came into view of the cell window. "hey, champion, you can't kill them yet. Wait for the arena. Then you can do whatever you want," laughed the guard. "fine," he said with a heavy sigh, then watched as the guard walked out of the range of their tiny window.
Keith looked at the new prisoners and sighed, "The first thing you need to know is I might look like the guards, but I am not with them; I fight against them. I am also the champion of this fighting ring, but I am the best chance you can get out of here. I put up a facade of being the champion and have a lot of blood lust so that the guards leave me alone. I get people out of here and to the rebellion. My name is Keith."
"Matt,"
"Samual (commander holt)"
"Shiro"
"ok, ok, well, what planet are you from?" keith asked, running a hand through his hair.
"Earth"
"Earth? Hmmm, I have yet to hear of that one. Can you tell me which solar systems you are near so I can guess where you are from?"
"uhm, I guess we're in The Copernican System if that helps. We haven't really explored the other solar systems. We just managed to reach the outskirts of ours," Matt says cautiously, trying to gauge the reaction from Keith. " that actually does help a little I think I saw that on a map a while ago. Hmm, but that means that you probably haven't even heard of the war!" says keith, his whole face in concentration.
"what war," says shiro sitting clearly and seeing that there was no imidate threat, holding his bionic arm closer to his body, clearly not used to it yet. "well, that answers that question then," keith says dryly, "to make a very long story short, the war with the galra started around 1000 years ago with the alteans, but they have been dead for quite a while, so the rest of us are left to defend ourselves or comply with the galra and... unwillingly help the war effort," keith says slumping down on the opposite wall from shiro.
Once the information on the war was revealed, the air became heavy with anxiety.
"get some rest. The guards won't bother us till dinner time," keith said, returning to his corner.
Time skip
A rhythmic banging on the door had all of them up and alert.
"dinner time maggots," growled a guard from outside the cell. Keith quietly got up and motioned for the rest to do the same. "hey monster, what do you think of the newbies?!" another prisoner yelled from down the hall.
"eh, we will have to see, won't we? But keep your hands to yourself. Their mine," keith shouted back with a wide smirk.
They were lined up in line with chains running through their shackles. Occasionally, a guard would shock a prisoner with a spear to keep them moving.
After a little bit, they reached the dining hall and were released from the chain, and they all slowly made their way over to the line to get food. Shiro, Matt, and Sam all made their way behind everyone to the counter, carefully watching everyone and seeing what kind of dynamics were in place.
Once they had some food that looked like goo, they picked it up from the trash and slapped it in a bowl. It looked like it would become alive and crawl away any second. All three of them looked at it, sent some wary glances at each other, and went to find a place to sit down.
They found a relatively empty table near the back of the giant mess hall. They all sat down with no intention of eating the goo that this place seemed to call food. No one seemed too inclined to speak, so all you could hear was some clatter of silverware hitting the bowls.
Then BANG, someone was slamming their plate onto a table near the mess line, and soon there was a shouting match between what looked like two giant aliens. And before any of the guards could step in, keith was already stepping between the two of them and shouting something that seemed to be in a completely different language, even though there appeared to be a couple of English words thrown in there. Soon the conflict was settled, and everyone went back to eating. Keith caught Matt's eye from across the room. The entire world seemed to stop, with Keith's eyes sparkling with what appeared to be annoyance, and with how he was standing, every muscle in his shoulders seemed to jump out. Matt looked down at his bowl of goo and tried not to think about his feelings with this new revelation. But he didn't have much time to consider anything before someone was sitting across from him next to shiro, and he looked up to see the same person he was admiring from across the room.
"don't worry about them," keith said, waving a hand in the general direction of the two aliens. "just stay quiet and don't draw attention to yourself. Leave everything to me." keith whispered and then added on as an afterthought, "You might want to eat that. It's the only thing we have here. You won't get to eat till tomorrow," he said, gesturing to the slime sitting in the bowl. And walked back toward the front of the room.
time skip
There was a routine that was set in place after a while. They would wake up at an unspecified time, but it was always the same. They would sit in the cell and make some small talk. They would go to the mess, and between lunch and when they would go to bed, the galra guards would stop by and take keith to go to the ring and then bring him back, usually supporting a few new cuts or bruises. Every time keith would come back, Matt would do his best to help bandage Keith. At first, keith was reluctant to let him help but eventually just sat back and watched.
They all bond really quickly, but before keith can help them escape, Samuel is taken to a labor camp on a nearby planet that sends Keith into a rage and almost kills some guards, so they end him out in the pit where he got his anger under control to be in his cell.
Keith and Matt got closer to the point where they would say they loved each other. Soon it was time for Mat to escape. It was heartbreaking to watch keith and Matt say goodbye. But more than that, it disrupted the routine set in place, and then there was only keith and shiro when he left, but keith felt a little better knowing he was safe.
When it was time to get shiro out of the fighting pits, they were caught, so keith went full ballistic and killed the guards. He opened as many cells as possible and sent them toward the escape pods. He spent all his time fighting off the guards.
Once keith makes that there are no more guards to get in the prisoner's way, he runs to the central control room to shut the fighting ring down, and due to his Galran genes, he can make the controls work. He breaks enough things that the only thing the fighting ring could be used for now are spare parts.
He starts running through the halls to make sure none of the prisoners were left behind when he hears crying from one of the cells and runs over to find a little Galran boy who was no more than a few weeks old with the dead mother next to him still warm, so she died recently. Keith gently picks up the child and holds him close. His submissive side comes to light and takes over to make sure the child is out of harm's way and stops crying to go to sleep. he wraps him up in a blanket that he brought from his cell and gets into the only escape pod left and takes off leaving a crumbling ship in the distance.
When Keith confirms that no one has come after him, he contacts kolivan. He types the secret code into his communicator and waits for someone to pick it up. After a few minutes, he thanked whatever god was out there that it was kolivan. He sighed, then said: "the fighting ring is nothing more than a pile of rubble now" kolivan looked shocked, then he finally noticed the child in his arms, smiled and said, "looks like someone's submissive side is really showing right now" keith blushes and mutters "oh shut up kolivan I need the coordinates to your base so I can drop this little one-off, his mother is dead, and I don't know who the father is, but he is a few weeks old by the looks of it, after that, I'm going to let them track me so that I can be taken to another and we can continue taking down the fight rings" the small smile that was on his face is gone and replaced by anger and slight exhaustion, "absolutely not you barely got out of that one alive I'm not letting you get taken to another one."
"why the hell not? I'm good at taking them down, and I promised Matt that I would help find his father. Before I blew up the central control console, I downloaded the prisoner documents and history." kolivan sighed, "Fine, but you better be careful. It'll take a few decophebes to get here. Here are the coordinates. Will you be alright?"
"yeah, I think we're going to be alright. I'll see you soon," keith said with a sigh.
"see you soon," kolivan says with a nod and cancels the call. Keith gets coordinates to a base by two black holes a few minutes later.
When keith gets to the base, he hops off the ship and carries a hungry kit to the med bay to get him cleaned up and fed. When kolivan comes bursting into the room looking flustered and gives keith a once over to make sure he is all right, he finally notices the kit he has in his arms with a bottle to his mouth.
"I knew you showed up, but when I heard you came to the med bay, I thought you had lied to me about being hurt again." kolivan sighs. "Kid, you can't do that to me," he says, running a claw through his hair, slowly falling out of his braid.
"hmph, not this time, but I just came here to get this guy some food before I'm off to the nearby planet, and this is for you," keith says, balancing the bottle and kit in one hand and using the other to dig around in his pocket for the flash drive that he had stuffed there for safekeeping. He held it out to kolivan, who took it hesitantly, clearly not liking that he was going to another prisoner camp. When the kit has had his fill of the formula, he slowly falls asleep. keith makes sure to burp him and change his diaper, then put him in one of the nests for him to sleep, all the while oblivious of the looks he was getting from the other galra that were all thinking along the lines of 'who is this kid' or 'aww that's so cute.' Keith grabbed some of his food on the way out of the base just to get as much sustenance as possible before returning to the prisoner camps.
Kolivan gives him one last hug that keith thinks lasted a little too long, but he doesn't say anything and hugs back. When he got back into the pod, he set a path toward a planet near the base he just came from, all the while deleting every record of him going to the Blade of Marmora from the ship's history.