THE BEST JEANNIE…

A/N: This story is taken from the second season episode "There Goes the Best Jeannie I ever Had", where Jeannie could be returned to Hadji by Tony if Tony wanted her to be on Hadji's birthday.

I wanted to play around with that a little, since in the ep. Jeannie turns the clocks back so that by midnight, she is still around. My question is: supposed she didn't turn the clocks back, and she did return to Hadji by the time Tony arrived back from the dinner date he has in the episode. What happens then?

As always, the usual disclaimers apply that I don't own any publicly recognizable characters or dialogue (I'm just playing with them), and I am making no profit from this.

CHAPTER ONE

Tony Nelson had a very melancholy face as he contemplated the minutes…no, seconds, which rolled by. Beside him sat his best friend, Major Roger Healey. Roger looked at his friend, knowing why he was depressed, but wondering why, if Tony really felt the way he did, his friend didn't run right home and do something about it. Roger didn't voice his opinion; he knew Tony wouldn't take kindly to it, but if he had Jeannie, he sure as heck wouldn't send her back to Hadji. He'd find a way to keep her busy 24-7, without the possibility of any court martial.

"I must have been out of my mind!" Tony was saying. "I can't go on without her!"

Roger snapped back to reality, his dream of Jeannie blinking up a villa in Italy with at least 50 gorgeous servants, (all female, of course,) forgotten. "You mean, you changed your mind?" Roger asked, secretly glad that Tony had come to his senses.

Beside Tony, Miss Galaxy, or Anne Devereaux as she was known to her friends, was saying in a somewhat frustrated tone, "I wish I knew what everyone was talking about!" She then decided that maybe, if Tony was in some real trouble, she could come to his aid somehow.

"Tony, if you're having a problem, perhaps I could help you with it," she offered. Tony was oblivious to her suggestion as he asked the waiter for the time. When the waiter rattled it off and Tony realized that it was way past midnight, he let the hot saki roll off of his tongue in the usually warm and friendly Japanese restaurant he and Roger were in. The chill he felt and the overwhelming guilt at having sent his genie away gave him the worst pain in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm sorry, Anne," Tony apologized. "I have to go…" He ran out of the Tokyo House, leaving a bewildered Miss Galaxy and Miss Atom Bomb in his wake. Anne and her friend Jacqueline turned to Roger, who hoped Tony would be all right.

"Roger, what is going on?" Jacqueline wanted to know.

"Well, um, Tony remembered a very urgent appointment. I guess the excitement of going out with us made it slip his mind," Roger said, staring after the direction his friend had taken.

"What appointment?" Anne asked, her beautifully sculptured eyebrows curving suspiciously.

"Well, let's just say, if he doesn't take care of it right away, a certain career boosting thing he's got going for him could vanish in smoke," Roger answered cryptically, muttering, "if it hasn't already." He didn't look at the two women but offered up a prayer instead that everything would be okay.

XXXXXXXXX

Tony ran inside the house, breathless. "Jeannie!!" He cried. "Jeannie!" He saw the bottle on the table and breathed a sigh of relief. He lifted the almost sacred object to his eye, expecting to see the harem looking furniture in all of its pink and purple hues, along with the jeweled walls that were Jeannie.

But he saw nothing. Nothing but a very dark space. He let the bottle slip to the floor, and sank down along with it. It was too late. His Jeannie had gone.