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Standard disclaimer applies: We don't own either show. We don't own Gibbs or Booth or any of the other characters with whom you may be familiar and who we have mentioned in our little fic. But the story is ours (and we're having fun writing it, we hope you're having fun reading it.

Hank Booth makes an appearance in this "episode" . . . Jackson Gibbs will appear soon! Promise!

Glancing at the caller ID as he grabbed for the ringing phone, Gibbs knocked against the empty bottle from the evening before. Hitting the on button and putting the phone up to his ear, he rolled onto his back then raised his left arm over his head to shield his eyes from the light streaming through the front window. "Gibbs." He heard the morning as his voice broke with its first use of the day.

"Hey, Jethro! It's Booth. Sorry didn't mean to wake you! Are you sleeping in this morning, Marine? Keep this up and next thing you know people will be calling you a WIMP." Booth chided his cousin.

Gibbs gave a low chuckle and in one fluid movement tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he rolled over to grab his wristwatch in the disarray on the table in front of the couch. "Yeah, Grunt. I was up past four balls last night writing your reports for the case. Don't be giving me any grief this morning!"

Giving an answering laugh, Booth continued, "I just wanted to let you know that I'm headed up to see Hank. Bones and I talked after you left last night and I decided that it was foolish to put this off. I'd only find more excuses to let it slide. I have the charts with me and a copy of the advisory that was issued after the sailboat went down."

Swinging his feet to the floor and rubbing his freehand through his hair. Gibbs pushed himself to his feet as he asked, "How do you think he'll react?"Padding barefoot into the kitchen to push the button on the coffee maker, he stretching his shoulders back and cracked his neck from side to side. "Any idea?"

"He's a good man, Gibbs. I think that he has some regrets over this grudge, but we'll see." Booth checked the rear view and side mirrors in preparation for changing lanes. "Truth be told, I'm guessing it will take him a little time to process the information, but that he'll want to try to heal the relationship. Are you going to talk to Jackson about it?"

Pursing his lips and blowing his breath out, Gibbs shook his head. "I have to think about how best to handle that. Give me a call after you talk to Hank and we'll see what our next move should be, eh?"

"That's an alpha mike foxtrot to you, Gibbs! As you were, jarhead! You can go back to checking your eyelids for light leaks!" Booth reached to disconnect the call on his Bluetooth, and laughed as he caught Gibbs' responding "Oorah!"

ooooo

Finding his grandfather in the games room, Booth walked over to where Hank was sitting and smiled, "Hey Pops. I thought I'd come by and see how you're doing."

Hank looked up from his dominoes with a look of concern, "Seeley? What are you doing here? It's not the weekend, are Tempe and Christine okay?"

Patting his grandfather's shoulder, Booth smiled, "Pops! Don't worry! Everyone's fine. I just decided that I wanted to come and visit you that's all."

Still worried, Hank nodded his head. Turning his head and giving a half wave to the other men at the table, he said, "Sorry, boys. You're going to have to finish without me! I'm going to have a visit with my grandson."

Shaking off the helping hand that Booth offered, Hank stood with a little effort, unhooked his cane from the back of the chair and used it to point towards the doorway. "Why don't we go to my room for a while."

Nodding his head, Booth smiled, "Actually, I thought maybe we'd go out to lunch. My treat if you're up to it."

Giving his grandson a puzzled look, Hank shook his head. "If I'm up to it? Are you sure Tempe and Christine are okay, Seeley? He acknowledged the nod of affirmation from his grandson. "Let me just grab a jacket and we can head over to that diner down the road that you like."

As he followed his grandfather down the hall, Booth studied the man walking ahead of him and was once again struck by how frail the man who'd raised him was getting. Biting his lower lip, he reigned in his emotions.

Hank walked over to the closet and grabbed his jacket off the hook inside the door. Turning he noted that his grandson had taken a seat on the small couch in the sitting area of his room. Hank walked across the room and sat in the wing back chair across from his grandson.

"Hey Pops, do you remember me telling you I had a case I was going to work on with Jethro Gibbs?"

Frowning, Hank replied, "Of course I do. I'm not senile yet. Did you talk to him about your father? Did you find out if your father was lying to you about why Jethro went overseas?"

Leaning back against the couch, Booth sighed, "Yeah, I talked to him. It turns out my old man was a liar as well as a mean drunk. Jethro was sent to South Korea because the Marines needed him there. He didn't ask for the transfer. All these years I hated Jethro and now I find out that the guy isn't what I thought he was, afterall. He's not the man Dad led me to believe ." Booth shook his head. "You know Pops it's time like this that I find it really hard to practice turning the other cheek. It's just that sometimes it seems like that sorry bastard did everything he could to destroy my childhood. I know he was an alcoholic and that alcoholism is a disease. But sometimes that just seems like one more excuse to not hold him responsible for his actions. For the things he did. The things he said."

Hank looked at the sad eyes of the young man sitting across from him. "Seeley . . . "

Booth leaned forward on the couch, staring down at his hands. "I know Pops. I know. I'm sorry if it hurts you when I talk about him like this. I don't mean to hurt you. You know that, right?" He looked up at his grandfather.

"I know, Seeley. I know." Hank glanced down at the table between them, then back up at his grandson. "I wish things could have been different."

"That's just it, Pops. Jethro told me he got Dad to some A.A. meetings. I guess that was the time when things were a little better at home, before Mom left, before Jethro was transferred overseas. You know, just from my experience in G.A. I know that Dad never did the twelve steps, well not all of them anyway. At least he never did them with me! Pops, I know he was your son and you feel responsible for some of this but, you know and I know that Dad's alcoholism was not your fault anymore than my gambling addiction is anyone's fault. It's just a fact."

He looked up at the older man sitting across from him. "Some days this reality is just a little more challenging to deal with than other times. After talking with Jethro I find out that I let Dad influence how I felt about this extended family that I missed out on." Booth glanced up and gave a smile to the older man. "I'm grateful for you and Jared, and, of course, there's Bones and Christine, and Parker, of course. It makes me so mad. And it makes me sad, Pops. Sad that he was such a pitiful man and that he was so scared that he had to ruin the lives of everyone around him. Sad for the opportunities we missed. All of us."

Sighing, Hank reached across and patted his grandson's knee, "Son, I'm sorry you had a father like that; but, we can't undo the past. We have to live with the hand we were dealt. I'm glad you straightened out that thing with Jethro. You're right, you don't have much family left and Jethro has even less. As far as I know, besides his father, we're all he has left too. After Shannon and Kelly were murdered I tried to keep track of him even though Jackson and I weren't talking to each other. I don't know if you know that I wrote to him at his different duty stations. Hhe wrote back. But somewhere we dropped the ball. I should have made an effort to get to know him better than I did."

He gave a derisive laugh, "But, our lives get busy, don't they? We take people for granted, we think that we have time to say things. To catch up." Hank shook his head as he looked across at the young man sitting on the couch. Booth nodded with a sad smile on his face."You think we would learn, wouldn't you? We don't though. We get better for awhile but then our lives get busy and we we make assumptions that their lives are busy, too. That's what happened with me and Jethro. I got distracted and he had a busy life. I just never wanted to intrude into his life. I can see now that maybe I made a mistake."

The two men sat quietly for awhile, each lost in their own thoughts. Hank looked over at his grandson, "AfterShannon and Kelly Jethro just seemed to want to shut himself away from what little family he had left and I sure didn't want to force him to keep in contact with me. I should have though. I realize now that I wasn't fair to him. I knew he was grieving and I should have kept writing to him to remind him that he had more than his father; but, well . . ."

Seeing the sadness on his grandfather's face, Booth shook his head, "I guess we've all made mistakes, Pop; but, I think we can finally fix some of them. I know I've started to. I worked a case with Jethro and I really liked doing it. He's smart and he's a good investigator. Bones likes him and I think we're going to try to stay in touch. Bones thinks Christine could use an older relative as a role model. She has her Uncle Russ and Uncle Jared," Booth smiled at the warmth that came over him when he spoke of his family. "And of course there's you and Max. Temperance had this really long anthropological reason; but, what it boiled down to is we don't have very many relatives and Bones doesn't want us lose contact with any of them."

Clearing his throat, Booth stared at his grandfather, "Any of them Pops."

Puzzled, Hank responded, "Okay?"

Holding up the cylinder he had brought with him, Booth opened one end and then pulled out the charts it held. "It's like this, Pops. I want to talk to you about the boat wreck that killed your father."

Irritated, Hank held up his hands, "Son, I don't want to talk about that anymore. It doesn't change anything. My father is still dead and hashing it over and over is just painful to me."

Tapping the chart against his knee, Booth frowned, "Pops, what I want to talk to you about isn't a rehash. I have some new information about that wreck and I think you need to know about it."

Staring at the chart in Booth's hand, Hank asked, "What new information?"

Seeing his grandfather appeared willing to listen, Booth opened the chart. "This is a chart of the upper Chesapeake Bay around the time of the accident. It would have been like the one your father had on his boat." Pointing to a small red x on the chart, Booth continued, "This is where your wreck happened. You can see that the chart shows that it's open water and should have allowed for smooth sailing."

Putting on his glasses, Hank stared at the chart and the small x. Shrugging his shoulders, Hank asked, "And?"

Nodding his head, Booth pulled a second chart from underneath and laid it on top. "Now this chart came out a year after your accident. If you look where the little red x is you'll see that it shows an underwater obstruction. A sail boat sank in that spot a week earlier. A week before you and Jackson and your Dad went out on the bay. Given the depth of the water and the size of the boat that went down, the sailboat's mast would have been just below the water. When Jackson drove the boat over that spot, the bottom of your boat was probably holed by the mast. In all likelihood, that would have been what caused the wreck and ultimately the death of your father. Jackson didn't do anything wrong. It was an accident Pops. The whole thing was an accident."

Swallowing, Hank stared at the chart and blew air through his partially closed lips. Standing, he walked over to the bathroom, entered the room and closed the door behind him. Booth, watching his grandfather struggle with his emotions until the door was safely shut behind him, rolled up the charts and put them back in the cylinder. Sighing, Booth leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to control his own emotions.

After awhile, Hank came back out of the bathroom and sat back down on his couch. "Son, I'm glad you showed this to me. I've been a fool. All this time, I blamed Jackson for something that he wasn't responsible for. I just . . . I don't know what to do with this though. I'm pretty sure that Jackson won't talk to me even if I try. We've been at war with each other too long, almost seventy years. That's a lot of anger to overcome, Shrimp."

Swallowing, Booth leaned forward, "You know, Pops, I've hated Jethro since I was nine years old. I've talked with my sponsor about it. I've done the steps. There have been times when I think it's better, then something happens and it all comes back. That's thirty three years of hate; but now . . . because of the case I worked on with him, I talked to him and I found out the truth. And now . . . well now he's part of my family again. I think if I can overcome my hatred for Jethro then Jackson might do that too."

Booth looked his grandfather in the eye. "You know what my sponsor said to me when I talked to him about it, Pops?" Watching his grandfather shake his head, Booth continued. "He told me to pray about it. But more than that, was that even Bones told me to pray about it!" Booth gave a low chuckle and shook his head at the look of surprise that passed over his grandfather's face. "I know! And you know Pops, even if Jackson doesn't forgive you, at least you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you tried. Wouldn't you like to at least try to bury the hatchet?" He saw Hank shrug his shoulders, but still refuse to meet his grandson's eyes. "You think about it. Give it some thought. If you decide that you want to try and make peace with Jackson, let me know. Jethro and I have talked it over and we've decided that it has to be up to you. You have to feel comfortable with how we move forward from here. You have to be the one to decide if we even move forward. But, if you're game we'll try to help you and Jackson make up. It's up to you though. We won't force the issue. It's your decision."

Patting his grandson's knee, Hank replied, "Let me think it over Shrimp. I'll let you know what I decide in a few days."

Placing his hand over Hank's, Booth gave a light squeeze. "Sure thing Pops. I'm in touch with Jethro and we'll do whatever you want. You just let me know what you want to do." He rolled up the charts and slipped them back into the cardboard tube. "As long as you don't mind, I'll be talking with Jethro about how this went today." Seeing his grandfather give a slight nod, he continued, "Now, how about you grab your jacket and we head over and get some lunch at that diner down the street? I'll even share my French Fries with you if you want some!"

Definitions of military slang (i.e., "WIMP, Grunt, Oorah, alpha mike foxtrot, four balls, etc.) used in the opening conversation between Booth and Gibbs), can be found here en . wiktionary wiki / Appendix : Glossary _ of _ military _ slang (remove spaces). Both of us grew up with fathers who had served in the military . . . some of that language had to make it into our story eventually!

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