Summary: When Keith stowed aboard a passing cargo transport, he expected to sneak off on some backwater colony to disappear into the wilds of space. What he didn't expect was finding a giant red lion-ship, that same ship turning out to be sentient, and everything that followed. (Featuring Keith being his usual prickly self, adventures in a ventilation system, and general misadventures all around.)

Rating: T for canon-typical violence and mild swearing.

Notes: based on a Tumblr post by an-android-in-a-tutu, which can be found by either following the link in the AN of chapter 1 of the AO3 posting of this fic or by scrolling to the first post in the tag Keith Raised By Galra AU on my Tumblr, where I'm darkscaleswriter. Fic and chapter titles are lines from the song You Can't Take Me by Bryan Adams, from the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the fic!

In hindsight, Keith probably should've chosen a different ship.

Ducking a blast that sizzled over his head, Keith skidded around a corner and barely missed colliding with a startled guard going the other way. The straps of his back rubbed against his shoulders, small and light despite how it contained all of his worldly possessions. With a hood pulled over his head and loose clothes easy to move in, he was quick and nimble and too fast to hit.

"Vannek," Keith swore as a hall to the hangar that should've been clear was very much not. Security was ridiculous on this ship, and if he didn't find an escape pod or a fighter or something soon, he was going to get caught. At that point, he'd even take the clunkiest cargo ship in existence if it meant he could escape.

He really didn't want to get caught.

Whirling, Keith bolted for a different exit. Maybe he could circle around, get into the hangar from the other side–

The intruder alert that blared claxons overhead informed him otherwise.

Keith snarled, ears flattening at the harsh sound. He could hear more patrols running his way, rattling armor and pounding feet converging on his position. Casting about for an escape route, Keith saw a narrow grate in the wall and leapt for it. If he had been a full-blooded Galra, there was no way he would've fit, but since he wasn't…

Thanks, Dad, Keith thought with a wry twist of his lips as he watched the guards look in every direction but up. Guess your genes finally came in handy.

Still, the guards would figure it out soon enough, which meant that he had to get moving.

Keith crawled through the vents as swiftly as he could, trying not to sneeze on the dust that coated every surface, including him. Thankfully, the alarms covered up the sound of his movements, but he knew it wouldn't last. He needed to get to the hangar, steal a ship, and get out of there as soon as possible.

Passing over one of the cargo bays, though, Keith's attention was diverted by something strange. Despite knowing it was probably a bad idea, he slowed, stopped, and leaned down to peer through the vent cover for a closer look. Below, the bay was washed in a strange red glow, almost like fire– or blood. It originated from a particle barrier that enclosed what appeared to be… a giant mechanical lion, of all things?

Keith's breath caught. He wasn't sure why, but there was a tug in his chest, a pull that was luring him down into the room. Something about the lion called to him, drew him in…

Almost before he realized what he was doing, Keith had opened the vent cover and was climbing down. This was stupid, he told himself, probably suicidal, but he found himself doing it anyway.

"Wow," Keith murmured, pressing a hand against the barrier. It was warm, like rocks in sunlight, like the walls of an engine room, like a fire in the dark of night. Idly, he wondered what it would take to get through it. The barrier's design was unlike anything in Zarkon's fleet, but it was close enough that Keith could recognize it as one of the strongest particle barriers he'd ever encountered. Impressive, but why?

"He's in the lion's bay!"

Startled back into action, Keith whipped around, but he was too late. Guards had already spilled into the room and sealed off the doors, and before Keith could clamber back into the vents, the grate sparked and buzzed with electric charge.

He was trapped.

Keith swallowed, backing away as the guards advanced. He drew his dagger, even though there were too many for him to fend off for long. Still, he refused to go quietly. He would go down fighting, even if–

His back hit the control terminal, and Keith had a terrible, reckless (amazing) idea. It was most likely going to go spectacularly wrong and end with his dead body drifting in the cold of open space, but… well, it wasn't as if he had any better options.

The guards fired. Keith spun, and, simultaneously sheathing his dagger, slammed his palm down on the panel labeled Open Airlock.

He had just enough time to see the guards try to backpedal, but they were too late. The vacuum of space taking hold, they were sucked out and tossed away to careen past him.

For a moment, Keith thought that his wild plan might have actually worked. He clung to the terminal for dear life and saw rather than heard the non-robotic guards scream as they were yanked away. Keith's arms were nearly torn out of their sockets, claws wrapped desperately around the terminal's corners. He held on, though, and after that last guard was out–

By some form of sheer luck, the last guard was close enough to snatch Keith's leg as they tumbled past.

Keith reflexively cried out as he was ripped away, but void stole the air straight out of his lungs. Open space yawned wide and unforgiving around him, ice on his skin and in his bones and he was numb because he knew, he knew, that this was how he would die.

Except–

Distantly, Keith saw the barrier around the red lion-robot flash, flicker, fade. It stood, rising up on its paws, tail lashing. The lion crouched, jaws opening– and, of all things, leapt.

Keith barely had a tick to register glowing yellow eyes and metal teeth, the giant creature blotting out the stars and then– its mouth snapped shut around him. Keith fell to his hands and knees as gravity reasserted itself, gulping in air with desperate gasps. For a long minute, all he could do was stare at his own hands, at the fine tremors that made them tremble like a shred of cloth in the wind.

He was alive.

Keith let himself collapse, giddy with relief. The straps on his pack were frayed, had probably been half a beat away from snapping entirely, but he hadn't lost a thing. He had escaped. He was free.

...Well, sort of. Keith looked around, taking in what appeared to be the inside of a ship. Hauling himself to his feet, Keith took a few unsteady steps before he got his limbs under control again. The ship was warm, he realized, warm like the lion's particle barrier had been. Warm in every way that space wasn't, chasing out the bitter cold that seemed to have settled in Keith's bones.

The ship rumbled in what Keith would swear sounded like a purr. Keith froze, heart skipping a beat. Was the ship… sentient? Alive?

What the vannek.

"Um." Keith cleared his throat, feeling distinctly awkward about talking to thin air. "I don't– I don't know if you understand me, but. Thanks. For saving me, I mean."

The ship purred again. Keith, already half-expecting it, marveled at the way the sound seemed to echo from everywhere at once. So, the ship really was aware. Somehow. He hadn't thought that was possible, but the evidence was literally surrounding him.

Making his way along the inside of the lion's mouth, Keith found himself in the cockpit. With a brief moment of hesitation, he dropped his pack to one side and cautiously settled into the pilot's seat. He knew he had made the right decision when holographic screens popped up and the lion favored him with another purr. Outside, stars blurred past at ridiculous speeds, the lion faster and smoother than any other ship he'd ever flown.

"Wow," Keith breathed. "This is amazing!"

Somehow, the lion gave off an impression of being incredibly smug.

The temporary peace was broken, though, when an alert flashed and a screen opened to display entire squads of fighters in rapid pursuit. Shots lanced toward them, a couple glancing off of the lion's side. Running mostly on guesswork and instinct– because the controls of this ship were nothing like the controls of a Galra ship, and he hadn't exactly had time to figure them out –Keith grabbed for the handles on either side of his seat and threw them into a sharp turn.

The lion handled like a dream. Keith had already been a good pilot, able to outfly everyone else in his training group, but this– this was on a different level entirely. The lion moved with him as one, and they were able to do a lot more than just outmaneuver their pursuers. An experimental press of the buttons on the handles revealed that the lion even had weapons, powerful enough to tear the fighters to shreds with a single hit. Keith couldn't help it and whooped in exhilaration, feeling lighter than he had in forever. Soon, every ship that had been sent out after him was little more than scrap, and he and the lion were rapidly flying out of range of any retaliation.

In front of them, there was a spark, a glow, and out of nowhere a blue wormhole portal spun into existence. Keith jerked back on reflex, pulling on the controls, but–

The lion didn't stop, and in the space of a heartbeat, the portal swallowed them whole.

Keith and his strange new ship came out above a deserted moon, lightyears away from any civilized planet that Keith knew. The lion landed with hardly a bump, smooth and gentle. The only thing they could see was barren rock that stretched as far as the eye could discern.

With a faint groan, Keith unclenched his grip on the controls and slumped. He let his head hit the back of the seat, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to process what had just happened. There was an odd sort of buzz at the edges of his mind, now, a sense of connection and pulsing heat that hadn't been there before. It was strange, but… not necessarily in a bad way. He honestly wasn't sure what to think about it.

"So," Keith said to nobody in particular, "that happened."

In his mind, there was a flare of amusement that wasn't his own. Okay, yeah, that was definitely weird.

The sense of amusement increased.

Feeling slightly less foolish than before, Keith blinked up at the ceiling and said, "Thanks for saving me again. And for getting us out of there."

...Satisfaction, that time. Interesting. So, the ship was sentient enough to communicate with him in feelings and impressions, but not in words? How did that work? As far as he could tell, it was mechanical, not organic in any way. Was it an AI?

The indignant prod at his brain made him wince. Apparently not.

"What are you?" Keith asked, baffled. He had never heard of a ship shaped like a lion before. What was the point? What was its purpose? What had it been doing in the cargo hold of an Empire transport?

The lion did not answer.

"Fine, be that way." Keith straightened, taking the time to properly look around. With a frown, he saw that the text scrolling along the screens and labeling the controls was all in what appeared to be Old Galran, for some reason. Strange. More importantly, though, it meant that he could barely read a fraction of it.

...That was probably going to be a problem.

All that aside, though, Keith looked out into the distant stars and couldn't help the grin that broke out across his face. There was nothing stopping him from going wherever he wanted. There were no regulations standing in his way, no commanding officers to drag him back, no suffocating rules that kept him trapped any longer. If they tried to take him back, he'd outfly them again. They couldn't catch him, not when he piloted the red lion-ship.

He was free.

All around him, the lion– his lion, now –hummed in satisfaction.

Free, she seemed to echo. Yes. We are free.

Keith slumped forward, laughing a bit. What he was about to try was maybe a long shot, since it didn't seem to be able to communicate in words, but… "You're pretty cool for a giant cat-ship thing, you know that? You got a name?"

A surprised pause. Then, a burst of something that might've been approval, followed by blurred images of scarlet sunsets and roaring fire and orange-red magma. The cockpit seemed to glow even brighter, shining until all Keith could see was crimson.

"Red?" Keith guessed, because that seemed like the simplest answer. "Is that your name? Red?"

He was rewarded with a pleased rumble. The entire cockpit vibrated with the force of it.

"Okay, Red it is." Keith got up, walking back to where he'd dropped his pack. "You mind if I take a look around?"

Red sent him a sense of acceptance. He could get used to that, Keith decided. Having a second presence in his head was weird, yeah, but he'd heard of alien species who had mind links with their entire planets. At least this was only one other person. Ship. Thing.

Keith grabbed his pack, making a mental note to fix it soon or get a replacement, and left the cockpit. The rest of the lion didn't glow red as the cockpit did, but there wasn't exactly a lot to see. The only thing of note that Keith found was a small cargo bay holding emergency supplies, but all the foodstuffs were long since expired and he barely recognized anything in the medical kits. Along one wall were extra suits of red and white armor, but Keith bypassed those in favor of the darker body armor suits along a different wall that wouldn't paint a shining target on his back. Those were of a sleeker design, probably meant more for stealth than anything else.

Perfect.

The first thing he needed to do, Keith decided as he pulled on one of the suits– which, oddly enough, actually fit him –was to go outside and examine Red. Based on what he'd seen so far, she hadn't been active in long time. Thousands of years, maybe, if the expiration dates on the food had been any indication. Keith needed to make sure that any maintenance issues were taken care of, because the last thing he wanted to happen was for something critical to break down at exactly the wrong time.

The second thing, just as urgent, was to resupply. As Keith used the suit's jetpack (very handy; whoever had stocked Red in the first place was smart) to jump off of Red's head and down to the moon's surface, he made a mental list of what they had to get. Food, water, new medkits, maybe some clothes that were more inconspicuous that his regulation blacks that were meant to be worn beneath Empire armor. Whatever was required for Red's maintenance, which could be anything from replacement parts to a simple tune-up kit. Keith was used to traveling light, so there wasn't much else he needed for himself, but… maybe a tablet or something so that he could keep up on news would be nice. And some sort of translation software for Old Galran, too.

Standing on the ground beside Red, Keith began to examine her. Her paint was chipped and dented in some places, scratched up with the wear and tear of time, but as far as he could tell she was in near-perfect condition. When he experimentally wiped off some of the soot left behind from a glancing blast, it was to find the metal below still good as new. That was impressive.

"Guess I don't need to worry about you so much, huh?" Keith said, patting Red's leg. "You're pretty tough. A lot tougher than me, that's for sure."

With a burst of the jetpack, he was back atop Red's head. A glance around showed that he still wasn't quite sure where they were, but that was fine. He'd figure it out. As he dropped back into the cockpit, screens lighting up around him, Keith asked, "Red, can you show me how to get to Iaketha Station from here?"

A screen opened in front of him, with spaces to input coordinates. Keith leaned forward to type them in, grinning when a flight path traced itself out after a few ticks. "Thanks, Red. Ready to go?"

The lion rumbled, crouched, and took off. Keith barely had time to brace himself, taking back the controls as they swerved around an asteroid. "I guess that was a yes."

Red had an attitude, Keith was delighted to note. Seemed like they were a perfect match.

In the back of his mind, Red pulsed amused agreement.

The problem, Keith realized, with having a massive lion-shaped ship was that it was by no means inconspicuous and it was unsurprisingly difficult to hide.

"I don't suppose you can turn invisible or anything?" Keith sighed, not really expecting a response as he circled the station at a wary distance. It was a moderately-sized colony on a relatively large moon that served mainly as a waystation for travelers, with few permanent residents and a more than healthy dose of criminals that frequented it. Iaketha Station operated on the bare fringes of legality, teetering on the edge of being a full-on black market outpost. If one was smart, it was possible to get nearly anything there. If one wasn't smart, well… there was a reason Keith wasn't going unarmed.

In the end, Keith settled for landing Red on the dark side of the moon, far enough away that nobody would find her and close enough for him to make a quick getaway if the need arose. Hopefully, if he got what he was needed and found who he was searching for, he wouldn't have to, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

(He'd learned that the hard way. This was far from his first escape attempt, and the others had taught him valuable– if painful –lessons.)

Nothing had really changed from his last visit, Keith noted. Some shops were closed while new ones were open, but on the whole, landmarks and certain stores were as consistent as ever. It was easy enough to resupply, thought it took some haggling with his limited funds, and soon he was slipping into a dusky bar after depositing his purchases back in Red's cargo bay. She had seemed confused about why he was going back, but he had told her that it was a personal matter.

The bartender considered him with suspicion. Keith had a hooded cloak on, hiding most of his Galra features, but yellow eyes were difficult to disguise. Still, he was counting on his small size and obvious desire not to cause trouble to prevent the bartender from ejecting him entirely.

"What do you want, kid?" she asked, folding four of her eight arms. The other four mixed drinks and wiped down glasses at the same time, deft and efficient.

Keith put his hands on the bar's countertop to show that he wasn't holding any weapons. "Has Laktixa come by recently?"

The bartender went still. Leaned in close, six beady eyes narrowing. "...Keith?"

Keith's lips quirked up in a crooked grin. "I knew you'd recognize me."

She straightened. "Damn, it's been a while. Last I heard, your mother was heading out to the Endonirn System to look for you, but that was months ago by our time. And we haven't actually seen you around here for years. What happened?"

Keith grimaced. "I was… stuck, for a while. Just got out recently." He made to leave, giving a bartender a polite nod. "Thanks for the information."

"No problem. Say hi to her for me when you find her, yeah?" The bartender flashed him a toothy smile. "And tell her that she still owes me those ten GAC."

Keith rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine." He lifted his hand in a wave as he slipped out the door, sighing. The Endonirn System wasn't all that far away, but if it had been months ago that she'd searched there, then she was probably long gone by now. It wasn't as if he had any better leads, though, he supposed that the Endonirn System was where he was going next. So, pulling his hood down low and hunching his shoulders, Keith made his way back towards where he'd left Red.

As he passed by an alleyway, though, he stopped. He almost hadn't caught it, but he could've sworn he heard–

There was a high-pitched cry, a low snarl, and then a violet blur slammed into Keith without warming. Keith stumbled back, feeling his hood slide off, arms automatically coming up to grab the kid that had barreled into him. They were a bit shorter than him, short enough that Keith could see over their head– and see the furious being stalking out of the alleyway with murderous intent, an impressive bruise forming over one eye.

"Vannek," Keith swore. How did he get into these situations?

"Help me!" the kid yelped as they ducked around Keith to hide behind him. "You're Galra too, right? You gotta help me!"

"Galra scum," the being spat, advancing on them. "Your kind are all the same; all you do is destroy!"

"Um." Keith backed up, the kid shuffling behind him. "I think there's been a misunderstanding, I'm just here to resupply, and then I'll leave."

The larger being did not look impressed. "Sure you are. Then why are you defending that brat?" Xe advanced further. Keith's hand dropped to where he kept his dagger, preparing for a fight.

Keith risked a glance back at the kid. "You know, that's a good question."

The kid stared up at him in betrayal. "I just got lost, I was here with my parents but I got lost and I knocked over his display case! It was an accident I swear it was!"

Keith turned back to the other alien, brow raised. "Seriously?"

"He did it on purpose!" xe accused. Bioluminescent markings flashed, and if Keith was reading that pattern right, it didn't bode well for him. "He destroyed a hundred GACs' worth of merchandise!"

"So, what, you were going to beat 'em up for it?" Keith gripped his dagger. "A kid? Really? That's just low."

"Says the Galra," xe sneered, and lunged.

Keith dodged the initial attack, but he couldn't move as he wanted– the kid was still behind him, and he couldn't leave them vulnerable. Instead, he spun, dragging the kid with him.

"Stay here," Keith instructed, shoving the kid into an alcove that shadowed a grimy door. Keith whirled back around just in time to punch their attacker in the gut, earning himself a pained wheeze. Without hesitation, Keith pressed the attack, pulling every dirty trick he knew to finish things as quickly as possible. Merciless, he aimed for sensitive spots and weak joints, lashing out with claws to score parallel slashes across flesh.

His attacker snarled, pulling a blaster. Keith unsheathed his dagger and buried it in the firearm's barrel, matching his opponent's snarl. Spinning low, Keith swept out his leg to send his opponent toppling over, and within another heartbeat, Keith had his blade at the other being's neck.

"Leave the kid alone," Keith growled, "or next time, I really will kill you."

The crowd that had gathered around them shifted, muttering amongst themselves. Keith ignored them, but kept a wary eye out for if the mood changed. He would rather not get lynched, especially not with the kid still vulnerable.

After a bare moment of tension, his opponent gave reluctant assent. "Fine."

"Good." Keith stepped back, sheathing his dagger. Angling himself to both look at the kid and keep their attacker in his peripheral vision, he asked, "Where did you last see your parents?"

The kid blinked at him. "Um…"

Thankfully, that was right when two Galra burst out of the crowd, running past Keith to sweep the child up in a desperate hug. Keith could see the family resemblance and breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that it wasn't his problem anymore. Before they could turn around to thank him, Keith flipped his hood back up and ducked into the crowd, disappearing before he could draw any more attention to himself.

"Thank goodness that's over," Keith muttered. If he was lucky, that incident wouldn't come back to bite him.