Title:Persuasion
Rating:PG
Verse:Mainly TFP with details from other continuities and my own spin on things
Summary: Starscream, Ratchet, Breakdown and a rescue mission. Sounds like a plan.
Notes:This turned out to be a really talky fic. So if you're not into dialogue I'd take a pass on this one.
Prologue
If Starscream were to describe the feeling when the long dormant but familiar signal suddenly flared to life he would say it was like being punched quite firmly in the chest. Having fallen under the tender mercies of Megatron more times than was generally healthy for a mech he was supremely qualified to speak to such sensation. That being established, most would not dare contradict him when he said the surprise signal pinging at him like an incessant bell ringing in the silence of his lonely base of operations was equal to a gladiatorial blow. Said base of operations being lonely did not provide a multitude of companions to either agree or disagree with his observation, but thankfully also provided little witness to his most undignified lurch and gasp of astonishment.
Stumbling over to one of his work benches to lean on for much needed support Starscream turned his attention internally trying to pinpoint the source of the signal. If he hadn't been the assured individual that he was he might have supposed his self inflicted isolation had begun to drive him mad. Dismissing such an explanation as preposterous the only other alternatives were some sort of glitch feeding old data to him or the signal was being broadcast in real time from its originator. Both seemed equally unlikely, but his reasoning being unassailable one was undoubtedly correct. He shuddered to think of the implications of either outcome.
A glitch meant a processor problem, which he was woefully under qualified to correct on his own. While it was true he had begun to scavenge for useful parts from the abandoned wounded and offline troops left over from battles between the Autobots and his former comrades, anticipating the day in which he would need to conduct his own repairs for whatever reason, they consisted mostly of flight, weapons, and transformation components and would do him little good if he needed his head cracked open. His equipment was even worse; a series of tools, sensors and machinery cobbled together from the salvage gathered from the smattering of Cybertronian wrecks littering the planet. Enough perhaps to construct his perimeter defenses and the tiny cleaning drone required to keep his new home clear of the ever persistent grit the disgusting planet insisted on casting into the air, but woefully inadequate, he was sure, for the possibility of delicate processor surgery.
On the other hand he might very well welcome the chance to perform brain surgery on himself with a rusty screwdriver considering the alternative; that alternative being his ugly past roaring into his even uglier present. The Decepticon cause and the following conflict demanded devotion and awareness unchallenged, and while incapable of forgetting like the flawed decaying creatures of this planet Starscream found he was more than proficient at shunting the memory of mechs, places, and events from his past to the back of his mind where they could fester in peace while he in turn focused his attention to more immediate matters. Killing Autobots and maneuvering the internal political landscape that was Megatron's lot left little time to contemplate lost friends or a home destroyed. Survival, Starscream found, was the ultimate attention grabber…at least for the successful, he couldn't really say one way or the other how it was for the dead; he surmised not so much. This signal however, if it was real, was here and now and would complicate Starscream's already overly complicated life by forcing him to address a matter he long chose to ignore. Clutching at his chest, the phantom pain now throbbing with the pulse of the signal, Starscream shuttered his optics whispering a name not uttered in millennia, "Skyfire."