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They ask him and he can't tell the truth.
There's no way in Pit he's telling the truth; after all this time, after millions of years he's finally got a second chanсe and he's not throwing it away. Lies spill out of him one after another, until it's not possible to keep track of what's true and what's false. Deep inside, when he's got time to think about it, he's kinda begrudgingly impressed with himself for lying so easily.
He doesn't have time until much later, when he's sitting beside Cyclonus, who's deep in recharge on the medical berth. Ratchet decreed it necessary for him to stay there for another orn, and so there Tailgate goes, back to his side, whatever the purple mech might say when he wakes up.
They still think him to be the bomb disposal expert. Good that Rewind knew so much about disarming bombs. Yes. That was a good thing. Right up until Talgate panicked, flailed and turned on something that nearly killed the archivist and Cyclonus.
Tailgate finds it easy being honest with Cyclonus; Cyclonus doesn't ask. He doesn't really talk either, whether inside their quarters or outside it. Tailgate hates it. Hates, sulks, rages, - and is grateful. Their habsuite is so quiet he almost feels as if he's alone there, yet somehow it doesn't scare him. It's almost as if he strips the lies away, like some kind of external armour, made to make him feel stronger, bigger, proud of himself the way he never was back then. He's never aware of how attached he has become to the lies that thread their way into every single conversation he has with the rest of the crew, until he comes back to the space he shares with the purple mech.
All because Cyclonus doesn't ask.
He asks him just once, of the choice he would make.
Oh, Tailgate knows it's important. He sees how they're not that obsessed with classes anymore, it's all Autobots and Decepticons now. It's never simply "mech", it's always, always "bot" or "con". And if he fits in neither category, well-- how does he fit in?
Before he can figure it out, though, Cyclonus tells the story.
He's not lying. Even later, when Tailgate comes back, raging at Cyclonus for making him look like a fool, he knows this. The jet doesn't lie. He grants Tailgate as much objectivity as he possibly can, but it's not enough. The outside perspective doesn't mean anything, not on this ship, not in this world.
But while he's listening, for that one moment, for just a nano-klik, the waste disposal imagines it, remembers it -- the way it was, for him, for other mechs back at the bottom. For just a moment, he forgets the Autobot badge worn proudly (if at a slight angle) by nearly all the crew, he forgets the way the word "con" is used with such disdain, and thinks of what he was.
Of what he actually is.
He fiddles with the datapad he's long since forgotten, that puts it down on the table beside the berth. He's aware of Ambulon eyeing him with disapproval, but he doesn't care. Sometimes he wishes he could tell Cyclonus the truth. Wishes he could tell him anything, instead of letting the silence do it for him.
He hugs his legs to himself and offlines his optics. Just for a moment.
He comes back online in their habsuite. His internal chronometer makes no sense - there's no way he could have stayed in recharge for so long, in this awkward position of all things.
Yet there they are, the stars behind the familiar glass pane, and a purple-ish shadow standing before it, staring right ahead.
Tailgate wants to demand if Cyclonus has carried him here, and how did Ratchet allow that in the first place. He wants to come closer and tug at his hand, he wants to ask if Cyclonus knows the constellations, he wants to wonder what does green energon even mean, anything to break the silence, to stop listening to the word "pathetic" running through his systems non-stop.
But Cyclonus stays with his back to him and doesn't explain anything, and doesn't say anything, and doesn't touch him, and Tailgate doesn't ask.