Title: Faint Resolution

Rating: K+

Genre: Angst/Family, a bit of implied A/R

Warning: strong language and anger. Lots of anger

Summary: AU for BSG's Finale. What Boomer really deserved.

SPOILERS: Entire show. Do not read unless you have seen all of BSG or don't mind spoilers

NOTE: I wrote this after being dissapointed with Boomer's death at the hands of a woman who essentially stole her life, good as she was in bringing the two races together. And they cheesed out of the resolution of her breakdown post-resurrection about the Old Man.

Boomer watches Helo embrace his baby girl and almost smiled. He'd always been such a good, honest man. A great friend. He deserved to get Hera back.

She tries to feel the same for Athena. She can't. Athena had waltzed in and gotten the chance to be human even though she had always known she was a Cylon. She had once consciously planned to destroy the Fleet, yet it was Boomer who was a demon. She hadn't known what she was, had been used like a cheap toy, and yet no one noticed that she wasn't totally evil.

Hadn't they listened after she woke from her stupor to find their Old Man motionless and bleeding before her, the smoking gun in her hand? Didn't any of them hear her anguished cries when she realized she'd been used? No, they forgot that. Forgot she didn't know, that she was used. None of them stopped to think "oh my Gods, I could be one too." and wondered how it must have felt. No, they just labeled her a willing murderer—attempted, she reminded herself. Adama was one tough bird—and then trusted Athena just because she wasn't a Sleeper. Didn't the realized she'd once relished the idea of wiping them out?

As Boomer's eyes fell on Athena's, a rage boiled through her blood. Bitch, this bitch had everything Boomer thought she had, and she had the gall to hate her own double. She had the memories of their sisters present at Boomer's first resurrection, and still she didn't think of her as a person...

She wakes up, the fog blasting away by screams and cursed oaths.

"What's going on?," she cries, confusion making her dizzy," What happened?"

The look on Tigh's face she's sure she'll never forget as he orders the Sergeant of the Guard to take "that thing"--it takes a moment before she realizes that's her—to the brig.

And then she sees the body. Blood seeping from two perfect holes in the Old Man's chest.

"No!! Ah!, no, wait!" she screams, tears now blurring her vison. Oh Gods....Gods not Commander Adama. Not when she's a thing, a Cylon. When the father she remembers never existed. He's alls he has and she failed to protect him.

She remembered waking up in pain after that impulsive little girl—Cally, she used to like Cally—shot her, because she had hurt the Old Man. Boomer almost sneered at her sister while the memory played. Another person who never considered she had put a gun in her own mouth in an attempt to protect their surrogate father. What, she wondered, had Cally done to stop it? What had any of them done? Nothing but turn around an accept a woman who had wanted them dead until she got knocked up on accident (she winces at her own scorn—this is not the Sharon Valerii she'd always been).

She'd screamed how much she loved the man as her own father, they'd all heard it. Since then, Athena has resurrected. She knew the mindfrak her sister had gone through. And Boomer knew it now, knew how mentally frakked up she was. Yet Athena just hated her. How human. It almost made Boomer hate her more. But that wouldn't be human in their eyes. Just evil and Cylon.

Athena raises the gun to kill her. Fine. She wants it to be over. But not before she gets her point across.

"Tell the Old Man: I owed him one," she says, almost smiling at the memory. He's been stern with her, but in a way a father displays disappointment in a child's misdeed. The smile and dismissal had done a whole lot of good for her as a pilot and an officer. She knew Athena wouldn't bother to tell, so she looked at Helo quickly and knew he'd tell the Old Man her message. Perhaps it would make him remember she'd been a person once.

Boomer returns her eyes to Athena. Go ahead, she thinks, do it. Kill the puppet and disregard the master.

"Wait, don't!" Helo shouts, shoving the gun off it's mark.

"Helo, she took our child!" Despite her shock at the sudden reprieve—then again, Helo is Helo—Boomer has to let her anger have voice.

"You mean the child I might have had with Galen? You mean the child and the life that was mine before I was robbed of my free will!?! You selfish, selfish cow! My life. You stole my life and you have the balls to blame me for Cavil?! He used you too, sister! He just decided I'd be a good frak, too!!"

There is fighting going on all around them. Explosions and shouts. But all seems pristinely silent in the hall. Athena looked gob smacked. Helo's face was a picture of empathy, and Hera regarded her sadly.

"Boomer. Don't cry," the small child says, and it is only then that Boomer realizes she is crying.

Helo is the first to act. He steps forward and grasps her wrists," We don't have time for this. The Old Man will know what to do with you. Frankly I'm sick of death."

And just like that, the anger and pain is gone. And then, so are they.

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The brig.

She was so sick of being stuffed in the brig. At least this time Cally wasn't there to shoot her. The irony is not lost on her. Boomer is killed by a woman who didn't stop to think about how it must feel to be a puppet, and then a woman who was one of the biggest puppets of all throws her out an airlock.

What surprises Boomer is that the realization makes her sad. Then again, there is nothing to do here but think. It has been mere hours since Helo brought here to the brig, and nothing in the room but a bed and a chair.

The door opens suddenly, and she jumps, eyes spinning towards the second hatch to find Admiral Adama staring at her. Lee and Roslin, the latter looking so weak Boomer struggles not to stand and give her the bed to sit on, stand a ways back, Lee holding the tiny woman up.

"Admiral," she says, and doesn't even care that a tear is escaping her eyes. She is so damn happy to see him recovered, looking stronger and more alive than she'd ever seen him. Something has changed him.

Roslin looks on anxiously as Adama sits in the chair facing her, and then it clicks. Boomer smiles softly at her, then sets her gaze on her CO. So the rumors were true. What she'd seen on New Caprica was real. The Old Man got himself the President.

"What's the smile for?" He asks. She realizes as she starts that it has been a long time since that calm tone was directed at her.

"I'm happy. Dee owes me 40 cubits for winning the rumor mill pot," she cocks her head in Roslin's direction," you needed her for a long time, I think."

He's clearly startled by her observation, but a small turn of his lips betrays his amusement at the revelation that there was a pot going on his love life.

"You owed me one, hm?" He says, changing the subject without appearing to.

"Yes. Just because I let someone frak with my head doesn't mean I forgot the life I thought I knew."

His deep blue eyes regard her, pain and loss in his gaze. She knows how he feels. Life was so simple when they'd all begun their journey, and then it all went to hell before they knew it. She lowered her gaze to the floor.

"Thank you. You saved a great deal of lives by getting Hera back to us so quickly."

"Like I said, I owed you."

"But you didn't have to."

"I did!" she shouts, raising her head to look at him again," Gods....I screwed up! I felt what I was and when I put the gun in my mouth I failed. I couldn't even kill myself right. And then I..I....," she breaks off, sobbing into her hands. Her sobs are the only noise in the room for a few minutes.

A hand gently reaches out and removes her own from her face. Adama lifts her chin so she is looking at him. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Roslin's conflicted expression—caught between hate and empathy—and lets herself look Adama in the eyes.

The expression is unlike anything she is something she has never seen, and she has the brief feeling that Roslin made that look possible.

"I've been through hell and back, just like everyone else," he says," My XO is one of the Final Five. His wife is the Fifth," he chuckles darkly," and I'm tired, Boomer."

"So am I," she says quietly, raising a hand to cover the one that has moved to her cheek in the familiar gesture he'd always had for those hurting under his command. It was why they loved him so much," I didn't want to do it."

"I know," he says. The pain she put him through is still there, but so is the compassion that made him so different as a leader," Ellen just told me how Sleepers work. You can't leave this place, however. For your own safety as much as anything else."

Her heart falls a little, but Boomer chides the part of her looking for absolution.

"But we're going to land on the new planet Starbuck found. Maybe you'll find what was taken from you down there."

She looks up at him, staring for a moment. A planet, a good planet. A place to start over. The joy almost knocks her over before she collects herself and nods. She's crying again, openly, but it doesn't matter.

"Good luck, Lieutenant," he says, and then he is gone, arm slipping around Roslin's waist and Lee's shoulder. Boomer knows she will never see him again. Marines will no doubt escort her down to the planet, and then they'll abandon her. But thats ok. She can never have that life back, but maybe she can make her own name for once in her life...

That sounds good, she thinks, and she lies back on the bed. In minutes, and for the first time in a long time, Sharon Valerii sleeps.