Viianta really was a pretty nice planet. He'd been on it ever since getting stationed out here back during the expansion era and hadn't stepped off it since. Granted, he had no idea how to. Tailgate didn't have a ship and he hadn't exactly crawled out of the cave with much money. Due to his, erm, unique circumstances, he'd been given some boost in setting up a life again when he got pulled out and introduced to the bustling neutral city formed in his absence. It'd got him on his pedes and dragged in some revenue and was actually pretty fun to do. Business, he meant. Originally, he'd wondered if he should go back into waste disposal. He knew how to do it and waste was one of those parts of life that was never going to go away. He could be gone for billions of years and there'd probably still be waste. But Tailgate had never liked that job. That status. Why else would he have gone around lying about being on a bomb disposal team instead? Trash disposal wasn't flashy at all. He'd been young. The young tended to like being flashy.
The shop he ended up using his boost to start wasn't flashy either. But Tailgate hadn't been young anymore. It was a satisfying job, actually. He sold just about everything that came into his servos and got to see a bunch of different people both from customers and from going out to explore the city himself. Even though attempts to find a group of friends in this new world hadn't been all that successful, he was happy here.
The point was, Viianta was nice.
But that didn't mean he was dead set on staying in that place forever.
There was an issue of proximity to deal with. Wherever Team Chaar tended to live (Cyclonus still refused to say), it wasn't close to the outer edges of the galaxy. Three quarters of any time off was spent just on the flight there and back rather than actual time on Viianta itself.
Tailgate had brought this up plenty of times over comms, but on the most recent in-person visit, he trapped Cyclonus into talking about it with him. Or rather stood in front of the door to that storage room while trying to keep the other sitting on the bench through the power of glaring alone. If Cyclonus decided he was leaving, this was hardly going to be that effective of a barrier. Thankfully, he stayed put to just deny every argument made.
"Your shop is here," Cyclonus stated the obvious. Was it convincing enough? Not to Tailgate.
"I can restart a business somewhere else. Doesn't have to be this exact place, but that doesn't mean I can't do it," he retorted.
It would be a lot of work. Cyclonus spared nothing to point that out. But he'd done it before. He'd done it before in the midst of the most chaotic part of his life. He could build a career again.
So the flier went about a different tactic.
"The neutral worlds in that region are not the same as those out here. They are far more hostile. They are caught in crossfire. Dangerous."
And that much couldn't be denied. But not every argument had to be denied; Tailgate accepted that a different place would be dangerous, weighed that against his own pros vs cons, and chose to vote for a move anyways.
"What am I supposed to do if you're in danger?" Cyclonus grumbled.
That really was the center of it all, wasn't it. The fear that this would end in disaster. Tailgate didn't like being scared either, but he wanted to cut down on all that travel time that kept them apart. He liked Cyclonus. He liked him a whole lot, as it turned out.
"Do what you do when your team is around. Do what you always do and protect me."
It was impossible to miss the flash of grieving, but hopeful, emotion that vote of confidence elicited.
Tailgate had taken this all so much slower than he had with Getaway. That mech had been confident and the confidence had been reassuring; he'd known how to interact in the world and Tailgate had only just gotten thrown into that world recently. There'd been a speed there for sure. Tailgate had been desperate to fit into the new time he'd dropped into. He'd been naive enough to not even look for any signs that what was happening wasn't right.
The proximity problems had really made that impossible here. There hadn't been a huge rush. Even if, in a way, there had been. They hadn't actually been on the same planet together that many times. Not even ten, actually! But the actual amount of time passed since they'd first bumped into each other was pretty long.
But with his thoughts on moving closer getting more incessant, Tailgate came to a conclusion. He'd been taking this slow, but leaving his shop and stability on Viianta behind was a big step. And before a step like that got taken, there'd need to be a bit more answers in regards to certain questions. A bit less hiding.
Tailgate found Cyclonus downstairs on the main floor; the shelves, the lobby, the storage bays, most stuff was down here. Ever the sophisticated mech, Cyclonus refused to recharge anywhere except on the floor next to a recharge station in one of the storage rooms. And that was just if he stayed the recharge cycle there instead of his ship in the first place.
At the moment, he was down there laying uncomfortable alongside a wall and looking over a data pad. He glanced up when Tailgate entered. There was a pause before both silently figured out what to do next. Cyclonus shifted up until he was sitting rather than laying down. The minibot shuffled over and plopped down near him. It wasn't quite sitting up against the other, but it was close enough.
"Can you please tell me something?" he started.
There was a prompting silence. Tailgate filled it with a sigh.
"You haven't really told me much about yourself," the minibot elaborated. "And, granted, I haven't really either. Not to say we both don't know each other, but...I just...I think it'd be kinda important to find out a bit more. How are we supposed to find a good neutral world near where you're at if I don't know where you even live? And- just in general- I mean- I don't really know what's expected in general, per se, but I think we're supposed to know a bit about where we came from before, you know, meeting..."
He drifted off. The room stayed silent. Cyclonus looked to the wall away from him. Tailgate plopped his chin onto his servos with another sigh.
They stayed that way for a bit before he couldn't handle staying quiet anymore.
"Okay. I'll go first, how's that?"
There wasn't really an answer. Shocker, that one.
"So I didn't always live out here on this planet and I haven't always done business as a job," he started, letting his servos drop so that he could better perk up. "I got sent here from Cybertron for my old job about, well...ten million stellar cycles ago by now. Pre-Great War."
If he was expecting to see shock there, he was disappointed. Cyclonus was still just staring off (although he'd at least moved from facing completely away to just looking at the floor in front of them both).
That actually was a bit of a shock for him instead. Most everyone always flipped out when they heard that.
Alright then...Tailgate shrugged and found something new to talk about.
"That's the only big secret I've got, actually. I missed all that time in my life. Got trapped in stasis under some unstable ground and had to wait all that time before I got found. I'm still trying to figure out details for what occurred in that gap of time."
Cyclonus gave an almost imperceptible grunt.
"What about you?" Tailgate asked after another pause.
There was a twitch of the other's mouth, almost curving it into a frown but stopping before it could express so much.
"It's okay. It's okay if you don't want to share."
It hurt, but it was okay.
Tailgate really did wish that his friend didn't feel like he couldn't talk to him. But it seemed that he did. And they'd have to go about that slowly then too. He felt the concrete under his palm shifting as he inched his servo slowly over it. Cyclonus didn't shoved him off when it did reach his plating.
The servo remained, then. Sitting peacefully on warmed metal while a much larger servo started its own slow, twitching journey over to meet it.
"I like to talk, I'm sure you've noticed," the minibot started up again with a laugh. "Can I complain about my old job to you?" He didn't really wait to get a confirmation. "I don't really tell a lot of people about it, mostly because it requires telling them about my little incident in stasis over all those vorns, but when I do get the chance, I like to complain about it. It wasn't too awful, I guess, but this shop is so much better. On that old Cybertron, I got sent into waste disposal-" he paused to laugh again. "Isn't that just sad? I dealt with trash. I would've until the day I grayed out, I think, if I hadn't driven that cart out onto the unstable ground."
Cyclonus made his little grunt again to prove he was listening. By now, his claws had gotten close enough that Tailgate could shift his digits over to tap against them.
"So. Yeah."
His servo kept shifting until it finally wrapped around two of those claws. At this angle, it was the best he could manage to hold the servo itself.
"Garbage disposal. What a job, huh? When one waste unit gets lost, I guess the rest don't even bother to go out and look for them. What difference does it make if one garbage bot dies?"
This time, the baritone actually spoke up.
"None."
Tailgate swung his visor up to the other's face in surprise: both at the fact that he'd talked and at the blunt words. Something in his spark seemed to curl around the crystal there in hurt. None? Really? That was the worth that was gonna get weighed in?
"It makes no difference if anyone dies," Cyclonus started up again. "Even the greatest of beings will die and when all those that remember them inevitably follow, their gravity well is lost forever."
Well. At the least, that wasn't an insult specifically to his own worth. But it wasn't exactly the positive outlook he was hoping for. The hurt loosened its noose, but his visor narrowed in dry amusement.
"You're a real happy fellow, you know."
One of those cone shoulders twitched up.
"It is just the truth," the mech defended.
Was it? Well, it wasn't a very fun truth, in any case. Everyone dies? Yeah, saying that really wins people over.
He was more amused than actually offended at that thought. Tailgate couldn't stop himself from picturing a party of airheaded folks sipping fancy fuels and trying to talk about the political weather or literal weather or whatever with the guy who'd just gloomily tell them that the heat death of the universe was drawing nearer. At least he kept himself from snorting at the picture, even if he couldn't help but imagine it.
For a little bit, at least. But a few gradual shakes turned into giggles and that became a laugh. When he was done, he settled back against the bigger mech's hip and let his helm drop a bit into the enclave where Cyclonus's waist was. He tended to get a get a bit depressing sometimes; that was hardly new. Even the poems and books he tended to prefer were the tragic ones on life's empty attributes. Tailgate just kept his head resting there and felt content in the closeness. There could be as much doom and gloom said as was possible and he'd still be able to feel content in just this momentary not-doom.
Cyclonus's closest arm moved in slow jolting motions until it was sitting around the minibot and keeping him in his little alcove.
He spoke soon after.
"You weren't just a waste disposal bot."
While Tailgate perked up at the sudden speech, Cyclonus kept on looking ahead stiffly.
"A being is more than their origin. You were forgotten in time, not because of disposability, but because all are forgotten," he clarified stiltedly.
That was hardly much less gloomy. Tailgate felt a need to remind him that positives had happened; how else could he have been here now if things had never made a turn for the positive?
"Someone got me eventually," the minibot pointed out.
The arm tightened incrementally.
"And I am more than grateful for it."
It left him with a feeling so very different than the brief hurt of earlier. Tailgate felt his spark reaching, stretching, happy. He snuggled in closer to the spot above that pointy hip plating.
"You really do wish to know about me," Cyclonus broke the comfortable silence first. Despite its phrasing, it wasn't a question. The minibot at his side made an affirming hum as he nestled his head into a better position on the softer plating of the flier's waist.
"You may believe it," the mech warned. "You may not. It hardly relies on your belief to have happened. But on my life..."
Cyclonus sighed.
"I joined Team Chaar because they found me first. I...had landed on their planet from a rupture in the atmosphere."
Tailgate could hardly contain himself. If he got too visibly excited, he might scare the other off from continuing. So he restrained the urge to jump around clapping and listened as calm as he could.
"Like a transwarp incident?" he asked.
He hardly knew a lot about transwarping and stuff, but it seemed like the right answer. Maybe Cyclonus had been working on a spacebridge or something? That was a weird image to have. The bot rather thought that any mundane origin didn't seem to fit his companion.
"No." Cyclonus shifted until his arm was untangled from the smaller mech and leaned forward away until they were no longer resting against each other. "A dimensional incident. I am not from this universe."
The mech stood up and left Tailgate behind to stew on that.
He found the other standing amongst the shelves in the dark store. Just moving around little items, likely to keep himself distracted. Tailgate knew he'd made enough noise that the other had noticed his approach, but he stayed quiet a minute to watch regardless. The store was a bit creepy with the lights on such low power. The glow of their optics at least gave him a bit more brightness in that regard. Maybe he needed to lay off on binging horror vids.
"So, um. If everything's just gonna die, why get all this organizing up to perfection?" he tried to joke.
Cyclonus shifted to look past one tall shoulder at him.
"Now you are getting it," the mech replied. Tailgate was almost sure that it was supposed to be a joke too.
With the still broken, he padded over to the other. They stood there for a moment. Maybe both were just unsure what to say next. Maybe Cyclonus was just waiting on him to start. No pressure though, right?
"You want to, um- Wanna sit down again?"
While there wasn't much of a vocal answer, Cyclonus did follow him back to the more comfortable and seemingly private room. This time, Tailgate went for the bench and patted next to himself. No need to sit on the floor, really. Why Cyclonus seemed so apt to do that was lost on him. There was nothing that great about shunning comforts.
When the warrior had moved silently over and sat there, Tailgate tried to think of what to say.
Perfect words weren't really easy to find. He didn't want to hurt the other accidentally or sound...he didn't know. Patronizing? Silly? Shallow? (It was the last that carried the most fear; how did one with so little life experience sound anything but shallow when talking about an experience completely unique to this one mech?) But he couldn't spend forever worrying about the perfect words because eventually silence would just convince the other to leave.
"I believe you. About what you said," Tailgate started, looking up into guarded faceplates. "I'm really happy you told me too. To be honest, it explains a lot." He laughed. "'Cause. Um. Well, maybe it doesn't explain that much, but still...I mean, you never talk to me about the war or tell me off for being an autobot or complain about decepticons or support them either and I have wondered sometimes why you don't seem to resonate with any of that any more than I do."
Cyclonus gave a brief scoff, though it wasn't directed at him.
"Those armies are foolish," he replied. "They will not play war with each other forever. There could be far greater focuses than just petty territorial disputes."
Well, Tailgate agreed for the most part, but that was because he'd missed out on all the different wars and skirmishes and didn't have much of a connection tying him to them.
"What about where you came from?" the minibot asked brightly. "Was there a war there? Was it over? Was your world similar to this one now?"
The arrogance that had arisen when deriding current factions faded into something guarded once more.
"The factions prominent here existed there," Cyclonus answered, optics narrow. "But the scuffles between the commonwealth and decepticon empire had finished."
Then it sounded a bit like the world that Tailgate had lived in before that fateful drive out into the wastelands.
"Peace sounds nice!" he brightened.
Apparently, he'd misread. Cyclonus's mouth curled down.
"It was not peace. They had come to a truce, true, but neither the commonwealth nor the empire's territory had a chance to enjoy that. They were forced into peace by-"
He cut off. Tailgate noticed that his optics were brightened, though hardly burning. More...whited out faintly.
"There is a critical difference between my universe and yours here," Cyclonus finally started up again. "Mine had an additional factor yours does not. There were creatures there, aliens; they came and burned whole worlds away. Every world."
Oh.
Yeah, that did sound markably less nice. Tailgate's bright expression fell.
"There were so many there," the other mech muttered, optics half-shuttered. "A whole fleet of survivors that just kept hanging on despite how inevitable our deaths were. There were bonds there that will never forge here because circumstances will never push such people together. Teachers and pupils. Belligerent friendships. Lovers. Never to arise here. Never to exist."
But...
Tailgate thought getting displaced ten million years was hard. All the waste disposal bots he'd worked with and hung out with and considered friends had long ago left Viianta. But...they could be found again. If he really tried, he could probably either dig them up or news on them of some sort.
Unable to exactly tell him anything that would do justice to that sort of situation, Tailgate just tried to give nonvocal support. He wasn't dense enough to not understand sometimes Cyclonus just wanted a friend that could be near but wasn't always talking.
After a while, though, he felt safe to speak again.
"Did you- did you have a lot of friends there?" he asked in a small voice.
Cyclonus tilted his head, seemingly thinking about a question.
"I had a commander," he said in return. Tailgate guessed that either meant the officer was a friend or else the closest he'd gotten in a dying universe. "When I was with that fleet, I served a mighty commander. Lord Galvatron. I served him until the very end; until I heard him die while the space around me erased itself and I alone remained existent. I failed him."
And the murmurs caught sometimes when the others shifted too much in recharge while Tailgate was still near enough to overhear suddenly made more sense. The pleas for forgiveness that remained spoken only as the subconscious voice drifted free through stasis. The pleas that could never be granted outside that sleeping subconscious, as their target was irreversibly dead.
Tailgate's visor dimmed in empathetic misery. Having to find out someone was dead had to be hard enough, but thinking that it'd been his fault? He wouldn't be able to deal with that kind of constant regret. He wasn't sure he'd manage to get close to anyone else out of fear that he'd 'fail' them too.
Yet here Cyclonus was: friends with him. Unarguably. Tailgate knew he cared about the other, but he was confident that went both ways.
He started to apologize for all the stuff that had happened in a separate universe, but checked himself in time. Cyclonus got upset when he apologized for things that he had no role in, like an order of engex being out of stock when they'd go out or something similar. He could very well do the same here.
Instead, he patted the other's arm and thought of other replies to make instead.
"But what about you? How'd you get out?"
No answer came.
"You don't have to say," Tailgate added, awkwardly. "I don't have to ask questions if you want to avoid thinking of it all."
Contrary to the words, the next sentence spoke was another question. "What about the alien thingies there that did that?"
That did get a response. Cyclonus shifted so that his back rested against the wall instead of leaning his balance forward towards the door.
"I check for them every stellar cycle. They have not shown a sign of arriving here. For now, it is easy to believe that they are truly erased. But if they never show again, that will not stop this current age from ending, finishing. All ages will."
So he said, in some form or other. All people die, all memories are forgotten, all empires fade. Before, Tailgate had found it a quirky habit of his to just be dramatically negative. Before.
They didn't open up all at once. Some pieces of stories came orns later. Some probably hadn't come at all by now. Tailgate hadn't been that wrong; even now, he was pretty sure that Cyclonus was shy. Talking in general about memories or opinions on matters or feelings just was something that made him uncomfortable. Tailgate was rather the opposite. Now that he felt confident that he could trust him, the minibot tended to talk far too much about memories and opinions and emotions and whatnot.
During that visit wherein he first heard of Cyclonus's curious entry into the lives of his teammates and eventually a certain autobot himself, Tailgate had finally wheedled out that the mech was most often stationed on the infamous planet Chaar. As it turned out, Tailgate could definitely not just go back there with him and live it up on the decepticon homeworld. There were all kinds of security screenings that disallowed even neutrals from visiting- let alone living there- without dealing with a bunch of red tape.
So they'd eventually compromised enough to look over a map of the surrounding area. The hologram had been set on the floor and Cyclonus knelt officially next to it even as Tailgate had laid propped up on his elbows while his legs kicked in the air behind him. They'd decided to venture out to a few of the neutral worlds that lay much, much closer to Chaar than Viianta did (not to say they were actually all that close to the homeworld system wise; they most definitely weren't). That tour had been fun, even at the one point that Team Chaar's ship had decided to close down on theirs and demand they come inside the larger vessel to "chill out" (a phrase that, after asking Sky-Byte, he'd found out had been made popular in some parts of the army by a guy named Blitzwing) together.
They continued to feel a bit oppressively dangerous, but nothing happened. Cyclonus and Tailgate stuck next to each other whenever Team Chaar decided to get cozy and the unspoken rule to not touch Cyclonus's...whatever they thought he was...went observed. For that, he was pretty glad. No matter how approving some of them seemed to be at times, Tailgate was still acutely aware that these were the exact example of people making it impossible for him to go live on Cyclonus's current home base.
Once they had finally separated from the team (Cyclonus with a searing glare and Tailgate with bright, excitatory waving that wasn't actually feigned), he was flown back to Viianta. Some choices were mulled over and made.
And then he bought himself his own little space ship with the finances he had from selling his shop and made his way into space for the first time all alone.
The neutral planet chosen had a place he rented upon landing and Tailgate tried to set it up with enough accessories to make it feel like home. And his friend- ...well. It was time to be a bit more honest. A better title was: the mech that seemed just as interested in making him a consort as he was vice versa. 'Twas a bit of a mouthful, but Tailgate more than talked enough to be alright with any length of mouthfuls. Anyway, Cyclonus would come make the trip from decepticon territory over and they'd get used to getting more incredulous expressions than had been earned in the outer rim when they'd go out into the town. His partner would give back dangerous expressions in return. He was just as much a grump as ever, but Tailgate could understand why he would be; the whole 'death of all things' spiel stopped being baseless after finding out where the hopeless mindset came from. Still, it wouldn't do to be miserable forever. Maybe everything did die. Maybe everything was forgotten. But he certainly felt the moment as the present and he was content enough at living it. And,-
(-he thought whenever Cyclonus would let him sit up on his neck for walks through a city or with his team present (no matter how they laughed), or whenever he just sat passively with Tailgate propped up on his leg in order for the minibot to play some card game with the deadly members of Team Chaar (he never joined, but he was there; he was there for these moments, occasionally cracked the sign of a smile at these moments, and it was enough), or those times when both would have too much high grade and Cyclonus would lose the stiffness altogether if Tailgate convinced him hard enough to sing him a ballad, whether ancient or something from a popular imported film-)
-well, he felt pretty confident that Cyclonus was content with the present too, no matter what darkness the future possibly offered.
