Summary- Skywarp and Tailgate get to have a couple talks.

AN- Tailgate's backstory is heavily inspired by the IDW2005 run, just with altered locations and time periods to fit the TFA universe

For whatever reason, no one seemed that happy with his decision. Tailgate was stressing, Rodimus was lecturing, Kup was chewing through his cygars instead of using them normally- reactions like that.

It was too late to go back and drop the extra autobot off again, though. So, ill-reactions or no, they were stuck this way for the time being.

That didn't stop it from stinging to hear or see the others so displeased with what he'd thought (at the moment) was a vital plan.

The autobot cornered him in an empty hallway soon after. The ship was going to be travelling for orns before reaching the location that the decepticons had died at.

The danger behind that statement was not lost on Skywarp, no matter if he tried to ignore it by thinking of other problems he had.

At the moment, that was the autobot cornering him with crossed arms and a narrowed visor (and, overall, no intimidation whatsoever, because Tailgate was rather poor at that).

Apparently, his good-sparked effort to protect the guy from being left behind on a doomed planet was going to be confronted (again. Rodimus and Kup already had given him lectures on it). He'd rather it not be. He didn't want to hear complaints from Tailgate about it. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was dreading hearing disappointment, maybe it was both or neither and he was just as lost as always with his own thoughts.

"You should have asked first."

Alright, but no. Why? He'd made a decision. It had needed to be made. There'd been desperation and time running low and emergencies that required emergency decisions and-

And the like of messy thoughts on the matter.

" 'was trying to help," he muttered instead.

It was true, too. Starscream was hardly a helpful mech and neither were any variations of him, but he'd still been trying to help. Sure, there were selfish reasons at play, but he hardly needed to explain those personal fears that had driven him to act.

"I had a ticket!" Tailgate protested. "I hadn't finished getting all my belongings together! And I-I can't fight- what am I supposed to do if you find those things out here?"

He'd die.

They'd probably all die.

They were doomed!

Skywarp shoved the negative thoughts away for now.

"I can't fight either," he tried, though the autobot interrupted it.

"I've seen you practice! You're going to hold your own far better than I can, that's for sure!"

That wasn't saying much, considering how poorly the clone felt he'd performed in those practices.

All they'd determined was that the both of them were fragged. He felt a very familiar wash of helpless dread.

"I had to. You may not have made it on in time," Skywarp mumbled.

Tailgate's arms remained crossed.

"And you still would have needed to warn me- or, better yet, ask me if I wanted to be abducted."

Maybe.

That seemed like a waste of time. Starscream would consider it a waste of time too. Then again, he'd think that bothering to save anyone who couldn't provide an advantage to him was a waste.

(So why had Skywarp done it?)

It was necessary. He'd panic over not having knowledge of how the friendly shop owner was fairing on a separate ship. He'd eliminated the need for that panic. He'd gotten to prolong their time in proximity and that- what advantage was that? Tailgate couldn't fight, couldn't keep Skywarp safe, couldn't make him avoid fears from outside sources, even if he brought...even if he brought none of his own...

"I had to," he repeated helplessly. "You couldn't disappear. I'm not scared of you."

He repeated it again, stronger in volume as the impact sank in. "I'm not scared of you!"

Tailgate just stared.

"I'm-I'm glad you're not, but-"

He didn't get it.

He didn't understand the sheer scope of the impact that statement carried.

"You don't get why that matters," Skywarp laughed quietly. "It's- see, I'm- There were five of us."

Oh. He hadn't explained his origins for anyone but Rodimus and Kup, had he? That had pretty much been dragged out of him, hardly volunteered. He found it easier to keep his vents running when he told it on his own.

"I-we-were clones that Starscream made of himself on Earth- Starscream is a big decepticon, if you didn't hear about him out here-"

And, judging by Tailgate's lack of reaction at the name, he probably hadn't.

"-He made five and we were each a part of him. Ego, lying, sycophantism, she wouldn't tell us what hers was, and cowardice. Th-that was me."

And for once it was more than just scary intimidating to admit it. It was embarrassing.

"We weren't made apart, we were-we were together. A group. We felt safe together. I think. I don't know what they thought. And I didn't feel completely safe, but it was better than when I got separated from them. I think- I-I need-"

a group. someone. a lack of fear.

"I wasn't scared of them," Skywarp whispered. "Some of them scared me at times, but I wasn't always in a state of fear around them."

Did that explain it?

Explain the impact?

Tailgate didn't scare him.

He couldn't leave that much of a rarity behind to maybe not make it onboard his evacuation fast enough or have it crash or explode or something that he couldn't be there to at least assist in panicking around.

There was a moment of silence. Skywarp didn't like silence. It made him nervous.

When Tailgate edged closer, he wilted in even more nerves. What if he'd ruined-?-what if he'd never get-?-

The mech reached over and tried to squeeze a leg (it was all he could reach) in half. Skywarp backpedaled immediately. And, as Tailgate started giggling and explaining hugs weren't meant to be threatening, he forced his spark to stop flaring in so much panic.

It wasn't retaliation for doing something the autobot was mad about.

It was comfort? For what he'd admitted?

Who knew. People were too hard to figure out to him.

He'd take it, whatever it was, anyway.

As the flight went on, the unhappiness from Rodimus and Kup over his so-called 'abduction' faded into the odd normalcy of before.

That in and of itself was a little nice. They were his only allies and they intimidated him but they were still allies. They didn't seem likely to attack. Their disapproval in his own actions hadn't been dangerous in that way, then, but it had hurt.

So yes. He felt 'nice' was a fair enough description.

But it was even better that Tailgate wasn't mad at him. Still stressing over their danger, yes, but their earlier confrontation had eased their own interactions better. They could sit in the same room together again without it feeling stifling. It was like the shop again. It was strange in its comfort.

Skywarp wasn't going to ruin it by complaining over that oddness. He thought their (mostly one-sided) conversations were nice too, after all.

"I missed the war too," Tailgate blurted out a few cycles later.

The immediacy of it took Skywarp by surprise. As he was not one for surprises, he couldn't help but flinch. Luckily, no one else was there to see it besides the speaker.

They were in the ship's training room alone. Neither were training at the moment, but it was a good place for privacy and Skywarp happened to like melting into the floors of empty rooms. Having Tailgate there joining him in cooperative melting wasn't bad enough to erase that pastime's purpose.

But he hadn't seen that statement coming. Granted, he didn't understand how to track conversations (how overwhelming could something be?) normally, but he still felt fairly blindsided considering the other bot had been spending the last three breems talking about some game on Viianta he'd enjoyed paying to watch.

So he said the logical response.

"What?"

The blue visor crinkled at the edges in visible laughter.

"You told me that you and your siblings were made right at the end of the conflict on Earth, didn't you?" Tailgate didn't pause to wait for a confirmation. "So you missed the war and the scuffles afterwards, like what happened on Earth over the Allspark."

Alright. But what-

"I missed it too," the bot continued. "I was sparked four vorns before the Great War. Can you believe it?"

No? That was old. That was like Kup or that autobot on Earth that was a part of the team harassing Megatron's plans there in Starscream's memories. That was over 10 million years old. That was way too old to fit this mech in front of him, unless Tailgate was just a phenomenal actor. He'd never seemed that much more put-together than Skywarp did. Maybe that was why he hadn't scared the clone, or felt any fear likewise when any autobot ought to have been conditioned enough to see his frame in unhappiness. If he was young, he wouldn't have learned any of that. And if he was young, he was like the other clones and that was something familiar and almost safe- at the least, not terrifying- and- and-

And he was old?

"How?" Skywarp stuttered.

It earned a laugh.

"It's a long story," the autobot said, before proceeding to tell it (that, at least, was not some processor stopping surprise; Tailgate just happened to like talking enough that long story or short, it was most likely going to be told). "I shipped out to some far off planet really early on- I just wanted to have some adventures before getting roped into a business or trying the academy or anything. Anyway, I was doing trash disposal- sanitation was my job-" Tailgate laughed again. "I know. Not very exciting. I wish it could've been flashier. I used to tell people that I worked bomb disposal because I wanted to seem-"

"Bomb disposal?" Skywarp interrupted, before shaking his head rapidly. "No, no, that's dangerous, no. You shouldn't want to do dangerous things."

The autobot gave him a flatly amused look.

"Says the guy on the ship heading towards existential alien danger rather than away. Voluntarily, I must add."

That just left Skywarp looking ahead of himself in still error until the other mech took pity on him and changed subjects back again.

"Anyway, I was doing my job this one cycle on Viianta- at the time, it was going to be an autobot colony and I was helping clean coolant tubes for the colonization ships- and I ran into a tiny problem."

Skywarp waited to hear what it was. He wasn't disappointed.

"I ran into a bit of fragile surfacing on my way to the ships and it broke under me." Tailgate laughed, despite the fact that what he was describing warranted huddling or screaming in a corner rather than amusement. Perhaps it was from the relief of hindsight, since he had not died down there? "I was stuck down in a cave system with scrapped legs trying to set off an explosion with my energon-rations trailer for what felt like a few cycles, maybe orns at most. It didn't really register how much I was dropping in and out of stasis and my chronometer was too broken to give me the heads-up that vorns were passing by."

The entire situation sounded horrifying. Skywarp knew he now had a new fear to consider; being trapped in a cave, alone, handicapped, while millions of years passed by. It was similar to his own gaps in time (and the horrid world changes he'd discovered passed during them) when flying in low-power.

"What'dya do?" the clone asked.

His companion spread arms wide in a celebratory gesture.

"I eventually managed to enact my plan! And some emergency team went out and found me and brought me up to get help- and it was so startling, because there was a city there now, and last I'd checked it was just a few colonization ships landed- and it wasn't an autobot city either!-"

Then it sounded like the city that Skywarp had just been stuck at for a few orns.

"So I had to find out eventually that the commonwealth gave up on colonizing so far away because they were distracted with a war, that I'd missed, that changed so much apparently, and that had been finished for millennias that I also missed-" Tailgate shook his head. "I still don't think I've really grasped everything that happened while I was in and out of stasis. I just try to go along with life, is all."

That sounded like a confusing life to live.

It sounded rather like Skywarp's own inability to grasp everything.

He was pretty sure he understood why the story had been told.

"You're old," he said, in an inability to sum it up.

The autobot crossed his arms.

"Technically, yes," Tailgate replied. "But mentally, I was unconscious for over ten million years and only just got the rescue needed to get myself a life on Viianta in the last millennia."

Which was still far longer a life than Skywarp had had since his own creation, but the internal Starscream in his head was laughing over how young that was.

"You're...young?" he amended.

That earned another laugh. Granted, it wasn't hard to earn that from Tailgate.

"Like you," the autobot pointed at him. "We both missed the war and other rather important events. But we can try to make up for it now, I guess, since we're both trapped heading straight into the fire now."

That was one way of looking at the panic drawing nearer.