ATTENTION: This fan fiction piece contains SPOILERS FOR THE EPISODE "THE WESTERN AIR TEMPLE" which is the episode after the Day of Black Sun. I'm sure all of you rock-hard Avatards have already scoured Youtube and seen it five times by this point… But I'm just warning you.

----

"Hey! You three are handsome boys – I've bet you've all got pretty lady friends!" called a bearded man, leaning out of his stall in the marketplace. His smile was wide, showing off the gap between his front teeth. "Well, why not make them a one-of-a-kind necklace to show how much you care?"

"No, thanks, we don't have any extra money to spend," came Zuko's quiet voice, and he started to walk onward. He was good at resisting things, he had been having to resist a certain person for the past months… Little beads were no problem for him to pass by.

Aang, however, was burying his hands in the cool glass beads that were mixed together in a small barrel, a look of pure joy on his face. "Sure! Sokka, look at this one!" He exclaimed, and thrust the dark bead next to the Water Tribe's blue eye. "It's the same color as your sword."

"That's great, Aang," he said, and pushed the bead away with a small sigh. He, like Zuko, was also good at resisting things. Most of the time. Nearly. "But we don't have any lady friends to give them to."

"Well… Katara's a girl," he said, and Zuko's head immediately snapped into Aang's direction as he heard Katara's name. Sokka, however, made a face and opened his mouth to protest. He didn't want to make a necklace for his sister. "So is Toph!"

His lips closed, and instead he sighed. "If you give yours to Katara and I give mine to Toph… who is Zuko going to give his to? Haru?" He chuckled at his own joke. The mustache still bothered him.

Aang thought for a moment. It was true, there were only two girls in their group. "Well…"

"I'm not making one," Zuko said finally, looking towards an opposite stall. He started to walk towards it, and pretended to be interested in the water containers he saw there. "Have fun."

"Okay," Aang said finally, and turned back to the small barrel of beads. He hunted through it for a moment, and selected a small, bright blue bead. "This one looks just like Katara's eyes!" He called to Sokka, and started to look for another one that would hopefully match it. He was going to make the best necklace ever, one that was made up of beads that reminded him of Katara. "Here's a green one…"

Sokka, on the other hand, was having a little difficulty. He didn't want to choose his beads just by the way that Toph looked. She wouldn't care about that at all. "Here's a red one," he called, picking up a slightly misshapen bright red bead. "It reminds me of that time that she got mad…"

Thirty minutes later, Aang was carrying a perfectly matched necklace of beautiful blues. The beads were all the same size, and they looked very professional and pretty hanging on the simple white ribbon. His huge smile showed just how happy he was with his creation.

Sokka's necklace, on the other hand… wasn't nearly as pretty. The beads were lumpy and different sizes. Some of them weren't even beads at all, and instead were just rocks with holes in them. The colors weren't the same – no two colors were remotely the same shade. Olive greens mingled with lime greens, dark maroons mixed with cherry colored beads, and all strung together and hanging heavily on a metal ring.

Both of the boys were completely happy with their necklaces, and were confident that they described their lady friends perfectly.

--

Okay, I tried to continue so it wouldn't be broken up into two chapters. But my brain is melting, and what I tried to write came out as rushed OOC drabbles. So I'll finish it when I'm sane. Promise. Might take a while.