A/N: Thank you SnidgetHex and pallysd'Artagnan for reviewing again!

"Lullaby"

2392

"Cris."

Rios lolled his head to the side, moaning at the feel of cold metal against his aching temple.

"Cris. Wake up, dammit."

He couldn't help but groan again as he prized his eyelids open, only to squeeze them shut and roll onto his side as a wave of nausea threatened to empty his stomach. God, what had he had to drink?

"Crap," Raffi uttered. There was a soft thud and another curse. Something wasn't right.

Rios fought to open his eyes again, his stomach lurching violently and pain pulsing behind his eyelids from the too bright lights. He was lying on the floor in the cargo area underneath the bridge. Squinting painfully, he shifted his gaze until he found Raffi seated on the floor across from him, her arms raised to one side. It took him a moment to realize it was because her wrists were cuffed and magnetized against the bulkhead.

She noticed him looking and straightened. "Cris?" she called hopefully.

"Mm," he replied woozily, trying to get his brain to work on what the hell happened.

He and Raffi had just finished a delivery of some cargo and the recipient had left with his goods. The cargo hatch had been open for some fresh air…it was closed now. And with his ear pressed to the floor he could hear the subtle thrum of the impulse drive engines.

"Who's flyin' m' ship?" he slurred indignantly.

"Some asshole scavengers," Raffi replied. "Jumped us right after the cargo was gone. They clocked you hard." Her voice faltered. "I thought you were dead."

He forced himself to focus his gaze on her in whatever reassuring look he could muster. His skin down the whole left side of his face felt tight, even part of his beard. He gingerly reached up a hand to touch it and felt a half-dried tackiness.

Raffi swallowed hard, then continued, "Heard them say something about stripping the ship for parts."

"Like 'ell," Rios growled and tried to push himself into an upright position. His vision exploded with blinding white light and he pressed his face into the floor again. "Emmet," he called weakly.

"They're offline," Raffi said grimly. "These guys know what they're doing. The minute they barged on board one of them plugged in a device into the nearest terminal and disabled all the security protocols."

Well wasn't that frickin' fantastic.

"I don't think we're going off planet," Raffi went on. "I can still see sunlight coming through the windows upstairs."

Rios knew better at this point than to look. The inertial dampeners were of course functioning properly but he distinctly felt the room spinning. He needed to figure out how the hell he was going to get off the floor and take back his ship.

A frustrated grunt across the way rattled his skull. Raffi, right. Rios lifted his head and chest enough to start dragging himself across the floor toward where she was restrained. Bile rose in his throat and he had to pause to swallow it down. When he finally reached her, he blindly grabbed her shoulder to haul himself upright.

"You don't look so good."

He'd make a retort about her stating the obvious if there wasn't a good chance he'd throw up on her instead.

He fumbled at the magnetic cuffs, punching at the keypad haphazardly. He knew how they worked, of course he did, if only he could get his brain to think straight…

There was a beep and Raffi's arms abruptly dropped. Rios half collapsed with them.

"Hey, come on," she urged. "One more sequence."

She shoved her hands under his nose and his vision went cross-eyed as he tried to key in the last sequence to unlock the cuffs. There was another beep and whoosh of metal, and the cuffs clunked to the floor.

"Need weapons," he murmured.

"I'm gonna start taping phasers on the underside of tables and consoles," Raffi said as she pulled his arm over her shoulder and heaved him up.

The room tilted again and Rios squeezed his eyes shut, letting Raffi lead him toward an access panel into one of the Jefferies tubes that ran the length of the ship on its outskirts. It was a cramped fit, especially with the two of them crunched together.

Raffi tried to sit him down but he pressed a palm against the wall to halt his descent.

"Nuh-uh."

"Cris…"

He gave her a feeble shove. "Move."

She huffed but kept going down the tube to the access shaft connecting to the upper deck, then pushed him forward to climb the ladder first. "You fall on me and I will shave your beard while you're sleeping."

He didn't bother responding, mostly because it was taking all his concentration to put his feet on the rungs and not slip. But while his head was pounding, he was getting a bit more steady, and he made it up to the next level without kicking Raffi in the face.

She opened the access panel and peeked out at the transporter pad. The coast was clear. She slipped out first and Rios followed, both of them quietly creeping toward the armory rack next to the transporter. Voices from the opposite end of the ship filtered toward them. Raffi pressed a phaser into his hand.

"Look what I found," one of the pirates called, stepping out from the starboard corrider. He was holding one of the mermaid figurines from Rios's quarters.

The other two pirates up on the bridge barely looked over as their companion sauntered toward them.

"Captain's got a whole collection of these," the first sneered. He held his arm out and let the figurine drop from his fingers to shatter on the floor in half a dozen teal pieces.

Rios heard the clatter of china, and the broken mermaid was suddenly overlaid with the pieces of a little porcelain shepherd boy held in two tiny hands. A black and white patched ball leaned heavily against his foot. He knew he wasn't supposed to play football in the house. And now he'd broken one of his mother's cherished collectibles. She was very protective of it. Whenever they had family gatherings and her nosy cousins fussed with the figurines, his mother would snap a dish towel at them and shoo them out the door. Then she'd make sure they got served last when lunch was going around.

Cris had stood there in the middle of those broken pieces, unsure what to do, until his mother had come in and started yelling at him. Yelling at him for playing football in the house when she'd told him not to, for breaking the shepherd boy, and then for picking up the broken shards. He could have cut himself. While she was busy cleaning up the mess, he'd fled the house and hidden in the shed outside for hours until his mother finally found him. By that time she was no longer angry and had scooped him up in her arms to carry him back to his room. The memory of her voice singing him a lullaby started to carry him away…

Phaser fire jolted him back to the present as Raffi swept around the corner and started shooting. She took out the one who'd broken the mermaid first, then the second nearest pirate. The third ducked behind the captain's chair for cover and drew his weapon to return fire. Plasma bursts zinged back and forth through the air, hitting bulkheads and consoles instead of their targets.

Gritting his teeth, Rios lumbered around the rear of the deck to come up behind the last pirate from his other side. His vision was wobbling again as he took aim and he prayed he wouldn't miss as he fired. The pirate went sprawling on the floor.

Rios and Raffi met at the operations station and Raffi began frantically tapping away at the controls. The ship pulled up into a hover over a desert landscape. Raffi's shoulders sagged in relief.

"Get these assholes off my ship," Rios grunted, staggering back against the wall and sliding down it to sit on the floor.

"I need to get the EHs back online," she replied.

"Party's over," he pointed out with a mumble, closing his eyes.

"Emil!"

…

Rios sat in the captain's chair, gazing out through the windows at the vast starscape. They'd left that planet behind—and the pirates stranded out in its desert—and Emil had saved Rios from some inter-cranial bleeding. The EMH had also temporarily overridden the controls on the replicator so Rios couldn't replicate himself any alcohol to drink for the next twenty-four hours. He'd have to look into a meta override for that…

Speaking of overrides, though, he needed to implement some new security measures so that no one could hijack his goddamn ship again, no matter what tech they had at their disposal. Maybe Emmet would have some ideas tomorrow. Rios's head was still a little fuzzy and the only reason he hadn't gone to bed was he was still feeling a tad possessive and wanted to stay at the ship's controls for a bit longer.

He lolled his head back against the seat and simply stared at the stars. His mother's voice came unbidden, softly trying to lull him to sleep. Feeling nostalgic, he started to hum along, his eyelids growing heavy.

But just when he was about to nod off, he jerked awake and moved to the ops station where he started rapidly swiping at the controls. He had just the thing. His mother's lullaby could put the ship to sleep should he ever need to shut it down and reboot to thwart any future attempts at hijacking. Yes, that would work just fine.

Rios leaned back in his seat and began to sing, recording the phrases for voice and pattern recognition. Once that was done, he finally felt like he could relax and truly get some rest. His mother's voice was still with him, bringing a soft smile to his face as he settled back in his chair and drifted off to her lilting tune.

Arroz con leche

Me quiero casar

Con una viudita

de la capital…