warning for mention of suicide ideation

Bad Cop's first impression was that it was cold. Very cold. He opened his eyes.

The vast expanse of space stretched out in front of him. The tiny white pinpricks of stars were icy and aloof. He looked around, and realized he was standing on an asteroid at the far edge of a belt. As he took a step forward, his foot clattered against something, and he looked down. It was… a mop? He bent over and picked it up, examining it. There didn't seem to be anything particularly special about it. It was just a mop.

"Oh!" Benny said, suddenly beside him. "I'll, uh. I'll take that."

Bad Cop held it out wordlessly, and Benny grabbed it and held it behind himself, like he was trying to hide an embarrassing secret.

"Um," Benny said, scuffing at the rock with the toe of his boot and looking around nervously. "Welcome to my mindspace, I guess."

"Do you mind if I ask what's with the mop?" Bad Cop asked, pointing at it as Benny continued his poor attempt at concealing it.

"Oh, uh, this?" Benny said as if he'd only just noticed it was there. He made a 'casual' gesture with it. "It's no big, really. Just a bit of flotsam."

"A mop?" Bad Cop said skeptically. "In space?"

Benny shrugged, resolutely not meeting Bad Cop's eyes. "You find all sorts of weird stuff out here."

"Uh-huh," Bad Cop said, drawing out the syllables. But it seemed Benny was determined to stop this particular discussion before it started, so Bad Cop decided let it go for the moment. "Ben-"he began, but Benny cut him off.

"I'm sorry about all this," he said, looking down gripping the mop like a lifeline. "I'm sorry I messed up in your mindspace and now you can't help Good Cop the way he needs your help. I'm sorry I can't deal with taking a backseat for more than five minutes without having a panic attack. I just-"

Benny was starting to shake now, and Bad Cop realized that the crack at the base of his helmet was slowly starting to grow, forming jagged lines up the yellow glass of the visor. He could hear Benny gasping for air, as if he were running out of oxygen. Hurriedly, Bad Cop closed the space between them and gripped Benny's shoulders. "Look at me, Ben," he said. When Benny didn't respond, Bad Cop put his hand on top of the helmet and tilted the spaceman's head back so Benny was forced to meet his gaze.

"Now listen to me," Bad Cop said, resting his forehead against the visor. "You don't need to apologize. It's not your fault."

Benny shook his head, and Bad Cop grabbed the sides of the helmet, pressing his face against the visor. "Deputy Benjamin Blue Chu," he said, glaring Benny down. "Do not make me pull the commanding officer card."

Benny's face twitched with some inner conflict, and then a tiny snort of laughter escaped him. Bad Cop narrowed his eyes, but this just seemed to amuse Benny even more. "Care to fill me in on the joke?" Bad Cop growled, and Benny totally lost it, putting his hands on either side of Bad Cop's face and laughing hysterically.

"Oh my god," Benny wheezed. "My spaceships for a camera."

Bad Cop tried to step back, but Benny was still clinging to him, and the spaceman floated up to keep his visor against Bad Cop's face. Bad Cop began to protest, and Benny was in stitches.

"I don't think you understand just how friggin' ridiculous you look, dude," Benny managed to say around his giggles.

Then Bad Cop realized what it was. His face, mushed against the glass that was barely inches from Benny's face. "Oh for the love of-" He struggled to escape Benny's grasp and only succeeded in losing his footing. But instead of hitting the ground like he expected to, he simply floated weightlessly a few feet above the asteroid, Benny still attached to him. Finally, Benny let Bad Cop un-stick his face from the visor, and Bad Cop looked up at him. Benny was grinning, even as tears welled up in his eyes.

"I'll tell you about the mop," Benny said, his voice cracking and his smile breaking.

"Alright, Ben," Bad Cop said softly, holding onto Benny as the spaceman lightly brought them back down to the asteroid. "Tell me about the mop."

Benny drifted over to where he'd dropped the mop and scooped it up, brushing a patch of dust off the handle. "I told you when we first met that you gave me the crack in my helmet."

"Yeah," Bad Cop replied slowly.

"I lied," Benny said, examining the mop for more dirty spots.

Bad Cop's eyebrows drew together. "Why?"

Benny shrugged, attention firmly fixed on the mop. "To remind you that you'd hit me in the face? I don't know. Talking about what really happened is hard. I lie about it a lot." He sat down, cross-legged, and laid the mop across his lap. "It happened a long time before we fought each other. I wasn't even a Master Builder yet."

Bad Cop walked over and sat down opposite him. "What does this have to do with the mop?"

Benny ran his gloved hand over the smooth wood of the handle. "I crashed out here," he said after a while. "My ship got totally wrecked." He pointed upwards, and Bad Cop followed his finger to look up at the asteroid above and to the left of them. There were the crumpled ruins of a spaceship strewn across the surface of it. Bad Cop swallowed.

"My helmet got broken," Benny continued, almost petting the mop. "I didn't run out of oxygen right away. It was slow. I didn't even realize I was losing air at first. My tank had still been full. I thought I had more time to do repairs than I actually did. And I really did try doing repairs, but, damn. Look at that mess."

"You're a Master Builder," Bad Cop said. "You can fix anything."

Benny shook his head sadly. "I told you, man," he said. "I wasn't a Master Builder then. And that's not something I could've repaired without being one, highly trained as I was." He fell silent for a few moments, playing with the tangled rope at the end of the mop. "Then I started to feel it. I don't know how long I'd been out here already. I was so alone. I'd given up on trying to fix the ship. Then I noticed I was starting to feel light-headed. I knew what was happening, and I knew how it was going to end. I'm an astronaut. One of the first things we learn is that there's the possibility of dying in space. And I used to think I'd be fine with that, because space is beautiful." He choked up, and rubbed his hand over his visor because he couldn't reach his eyes to wipe the tears away. "But space is cold," he continued haltingly. "And it's empty and lonely. And I knew I was going to die slowly, and it terrified me. It terrified me. I thought about ending it quickly, but I couldn't, because I was still clinging onto some tiny ridiculous hope that maybe someone would find me before my air ran out."

Bad Cop's mouth went dry at the idea of Benny contemplating suicide. "But it paid off," he said hoarsely. "You were rescued."

"No," Benny said, the word catching in his throat. "No one ever found me. I found this mop, though." He gestured to the object. "He- it was in my ship. One of the few things that didn't get broken. And I was so- I was so alone. I named him. Moppy." He gave Bad Cop a watery smile. "Creative, right? I didn't have much in the way of brainpower. We had some pretty deep philosophical conversations, I think. I can't remember so well anymore. I came so close to dying. So close. But I had an epiphany. About life, the universe, everything. And suddenly I could see it all. All the little bits of the wreckage, all the pieces of my spaceship. I could see how to put it all together, to fix it just enough to get home. And I did it. I made it. I crashed outside our base, half-dead. The others brought me inside, brought me back." He gave a humorless laugh and buried his head in his hands. "Most people put so much training and effort and desire into becoming Master Builders. It takes some people their whole life. And I didn't even mean to become one. Turns out all you gotta do is die."

Benny was shaking, trembling like a leaf, and Bad Cop had never felt so useless in his life. Tentatively, he reached out and put his hand on Benny's knee. Benny grabbed it, lacing his gloved fingers through Bad Cop's bare ones.

"I'm sorry, B," Benny gasped, shudders wracking his body. "That's why I'm so scared of mindspaces. Because this is mine. Because part of me is still on this asteroid. Lost and cold and alone. Talking to a damn mop to escape that reality. And every time I take a backseat to you, it's just so dark and it's like being back here again, trapped-"

He was interrupted as Bad Cop suddenly pulled him into a tight hug. "No, Ben, no," Bad Cop murmured. "Oh, Ben, don't be sorry.

Benny clung to Bad Cop like a lifeline, sobbing and heaving, and Bad Cop held him and rocked him gently. "You're not alone anymore, Ben," Bad Cop said softly, wishing he could run his hands through Benny's hair, wipe the spaceman's tears away. "I'm here. And I promise, I promise you'll never be alone again."

Benny was still shivering, but his breathing was beginning to calm, and he curled up against Bad Cop. "Listen," Bad Cop said, putting one hand under Benny's chin and tilting the spaceman's head up. "When we switch, you're not alone in there. We're sharing a head. I know it's cut off, but I think I have a sol-"

And then an explosion threw Benny sideways off the chair.