It's a set of questions he has spent a lot of time asking himself, a conversation he has never dared to have aloud - even with Joi. Where is the line between biological programming and synthetic programming? How much of what he is, who he is, is down to him and the choices he makes, and how much is owed to whichever programmer typed whichever keystrokes that gave him the ability to feel and choose and know?
Did he really only change, like anyone might under duress? Or is there something wrong with him now that will continue to deteriorate as he goes against his baseline?
What was your most shameful moment?
"Distinct," he whispers, but it's not to her, it's not to anyone, it's just a reflex as sure as blowing in someone's eye will make them blink. He takes a pull off his cigarette like he doesn't even know he said it, lets the smoke out on a long, shaky breath, and then he's talking to her again.
"I don't remember all of it," he says again, honestly. "But it's a blade runner. I'm a rogue replicant. There's only one way that ends." And it probably has something to do with why his right eye aches more, is less reliable, than his left just now. "And when it ended - there's. We're always told it's impossible for any of us to remember the factory, or the repair facility. We're offline. We're not aware of anything, we're so many pounds of synthetic meat and manufactured bone. But I've always thought..." He shakes his head, shivers without being able to stop it.
Maybe for K, nature vs. nurture is simply programming vs. adaptation. Hasn't Sara been programmed by the League? Broken down and rebuilt into a weapon, someone they could point and shoot, carry out assignments and orders just like he did? Hadn't she put down people, hunted down her own kind, just like he had?
If humans had a baseline test, she would've failed hers a long time ago. She wasn't anywhere close to the girl who'd left on that boat all those years ago. Scared, selfish, innocent.
"What?" She frowns, barely catching the word under his breath. But he breezes past it before she has a chance to latch on, and when he shudders, something cold runs down her own spine, her fingers threading through his.
"Is that the first memory you have?" False memory or not, it's a horrifying one to have rattling around in your brain. "Do you... do they give you memories? A childhood?"
It's a dangerous question for him in particular, like the tumble of rocks over a dropoff edge, the splintering of cracked glass, the click of a gun safety; he hears it and his own grip tightens faintly, but he holds it off. He relaxes again.
He doesn't have to talk about that one, not really, it's only a question.
"Humans sometimes talk about us being kept in drawers, in lockers, when we're not doing our jobs. That's what I remember. A space too small to move in, that you have to push against the sides to take a deep breath. No light. No sound. Not until they open it up and let us out, wrapped up in plastic, ready to ship. I don't know if it's real or not, but when I have bad dreams, it's always that." A sense memory he can't place - not quite real, not quite not.
"They do," he says, one more pull off the cigarette and it's done, he has to put it out. "LAPD paid for twelve for me. They must have anticipated a lot of trauma, the need for a lot of stability. Some of those memories are of growing up, yes."
She can feel the tension ebb and flow in the muscles of his hand. The desire to retreat into yourself, hide away from the sharp edges, from the memories that only remind you of how broken and fractured you really are. But he keeps coming back, keeps opening up pieces of himself, and she's grateful for that. Grateful that he's seen the broken pieces of her and hasn't retreated, either.
The way he describes it makes her uneasy, wraps around her lungs and squeezes. "That's where he took you." When he'd disappeared. That's where he'd trapped him the second time. When she wasn't around to stop it.
Her fingers curl against his, like she needs the assurance that he's here. That he'd made it out of that place, made it back. Twelve memories doesn't seem like nearly enough. He deserves better. Deserves more, a hell of a lot more than most of the humans she knows.
He nods, first hesitant, then more firmly. Yes. That's where he went, that's where he was trapped, he's sure of it even if he can't remember every single detail - even if maybe he never will. He remembers suffocating alone in the dark, part of the system and no more, plastic and shipping gel pressing into his mouth and ears and nose and eyes, unable to even raise his hands to try to push his way back.
He wishes he could turn on a light, maybe he'd feel better, but even with just the window letting slivers in from the Down outside it's already more than he'd had there. He looks down at where her fingers are clasped around his, possessive almost, like she can keep him here with her. That's what it feels like to him: anchoring, to here and to now and to whatever version of being alive this is for him.
"I know - it's hard to understand." He's trying. He'll always try, it's not in him to stop, even if his determination is dead silent alongside most others. "Is there anything you just know is absolutely wrong? Something so... anathema to everything you are and everything you're supposed to be that no one needs it explained that it's shameful, and terrible, and pathetic?"
It makes her sick, turns her stomach to know that's how he died. Alone, in the dark, treated like a thing, reinforcing the absolute worst of what he's been told, over and over again. That feeling - the despair surrounding his doppelganger was overwhelming. Nearly swallowed her whole, and that's how he'd gone down. Drowning in it.
She tries to suck in a breath, the air shallow in her lungs, the darkness and the smoke thick in the air around them. If she's his anchor, he's just as much hers. She stares down at their hands, chewing at the inside of her lip as she thinks on his question. There's a dry laugh on her lips, one that doesn't have any real mirth to it.
"Shameful and terrible is pretty much where I live," she admits, the pad of her thumb tracing the curve of his wrist. "But I chose that path. You... you don't deserve that."
His answer is immediate, not argumentative or aggressive but still firm. He might not have said it before all this, but now? Now it's hammered home to him that he's a traitor, he's dangerous, he is everything he's ever hunted and worse because he absolutely knew better and chose to do it anyway.
And he did: "I chose to go rogue. Like I know both that I was never a child but I have memories of an orphanage, I know that what I did was the right thing to do and that it was the wrong thing for me to do. I did it knowing what the consequence was. I did it knowing that it went against everything I was created to do. I'm not sorry I did it, but right now -"
His breath comes faster as he speaks, hitching with the leftovers both of what really happened and what the nightmare branded into his mind; he hadn't intended to sacrifice himself. It's only that the programming that he betrayed was stronger than the knowledge that he'd do it again exactly like he did before, and left him drowning.
It's the most she's seen him speak, the words tumbling out of him freely, tight with emotion that he's usually so good at masking. He's unraveling, fear heavy, raw in his voice, and her hand slips out of his only so she can shift in closer, take his face in both of hers.
"Stop- hey, look at me." She looks him squarely in the eyes, steady. "Just because something was programmed into you doesn't make it right. Those rules, those guidelines, they were created by people, right? Fallible, human people, and humans are shit at choosing right from wrong. So you going rogue, that was your choice to do what you thought was right. And I'd trust that judgment over any of those assholes I saw at the station."
What she doesn't realize - what he is completely uninterested in telling her - is that there's a part of him that's programmed to obey human orders, too. There's a whole subsection of his programming devoted entirely to the superiority and preservation of human life, and he is at the mercy of it still. He likes humans. He always has.
So she reaches for him and tells him to look at her and he goes still, goes quiet, and looks back. He listens, and he knows she's right, he knows he made the right call, he does. He does.
(You imagined it was you? Oh, you did.)
"That doesn't make it easy," he manages, brow furrowed, only barely managing to keep meeting her eyes.
There's so much she's missing. So many pieces to wrap her mind around, so many factors that affect how he sees the world, how his world saw him.
Her touch is light, but insistent. And when she's sure he won't fight her on that, she lets her hands slip back down into her lap, searching his features quietly.
"Nothing about where you come from is easy. But it's like I told you. You don't have to stick by those rules anymore. No one here sees you as... as they did."
When her hands fall away, he doesn't move from where she left him, still watchful, still braced for something he can't even name but that he expects will happen anyway.
Los Angeles was terrible, it was dying, but it was home; the rules he was subject to there were exacting, were harsh, but there were rules. He thinks he could like the comparative freedom, perhaps, if it didn't feel like trying to balance on a high wire without a net - and isn't that a traitorous thought, too?
"Not no one," he adds after a moment, gesturing at the black mark down his throat, at the mess that is his head. "I'm trying," he promises, a faint note of something like desperation woven through.
She knows what it's like. To seek comfort in something terrible, but familiar. The League, destructive as it was to her soul, to the person she used to be, was home for six years. Familiar. Structured. But eventually, it had all become too much.
He reminds her of the mark that signifies his standing here, arbitrary as it is. She frowns at it, gaze lingering there for a moment.
"I know you are," she concedes quietly. "But you're not alone, okay? This... this place is a mess, but it can be better than it was at home. It will be."
He is, patently, not alone; she came to find him, even angry, even hurting both physically and emotionally. Even willing to threaten him into never trying this again. And things had been better, briefly, and aimed at an upward trend at least for a bit.
He'd been warned about the ways the city, the program have of knocking its subjects down a rung. Nothing could have prepared him for this though.
He nods, even if he can't quite smile yet. He hears her. He acknowledges her. He'll do his level best to believe her.
"Will you -" He stops, licks his lips, tries again. "Can we talk about something good?"
Sara's anger may run hot, easily ignited by something that might seem trivial. But she cares deeply about the few people in her life she lets in. And K's a part of that now. She's not sure how it happened, when it happened, but it's not so easily shaken.
She studies him curiously, anticipating a request, already half agreeing to whatever the hell it is - if it'll help. If it'll cushion the below. When it actually lands, she sputters out a soft laugh, smiling down at her hands.
"That I can do," she replies, lifting her gaze to his again. "You hungry?" She slips off the bed, reclaiming the backpack she'd brought and digging around in it for a lump wrapped in foil. "Barry made... I dunno what this is. Banana bread, maybe."
Normally the answer to this question is a resounding yes; the one thing he never tries to defend about Los Angeles is the food or the drink, not in comparison to here, and he is voracious after a lifetime of grubs being the only protein in his life, of artifically flavored fruits and vegetables that no longer taste anything like the foods they're modeled after he's discovered only after coming here. He is eager to try anything and everything, and enjoys even the simplest of things.
He still nods, he still agrees that he is, but it's rote; his stomach is as unsettled as the rest of him and he honestly has no idea how this is going to go, but he'll try. For Sara, he'll try, and even he can recognize that under normal circumstances he would be enthusiastically agreeing.
"I've never had banana bread," he offers, moving to the edge of the bed himself, scrubbing his hands down his face and through his hair in hopes it will clear his mind a bit more. "The cookies were amazing." Not an uncommon review, from him.
She's seen his eyes light up at the simplest things - a mixed drink, a piece of fresh fruit, a random appetizer they serve at the bar. She's gotten into the habit of mixing up small tastes of this and that at the bar - a shot with a spice he's never tried or a juice they've just gotten in.
There's not much light in his eyes now, though. Not after that thing had gone and snuffed it out. Still, he's trying, like he said he would, and at the very least he has to be starving from everything he's just been though.
She toes off her boots, unwraps the tin foil and perches back onto the edge of the bed next to him, crossing her legs underneath herself and offering it out for him to break off a piece. "It's good. There's chocolate chips in it." She grabs a piece for herself, munching on it thoughtfully, trying hard not to keep looking over him, keep checking to make sure he's not crumbling.
"I think pretty much everything he makes is amazing. But I'm shit in the kitchen." She offers a small smile. "Do you have a favorite food?"
He does fix the contents of the package with, it must be said, a slightly confounded look. He's not sure what he would have expected banana bread to look like, but as he accepts it he points out, "It doesn't look like a banana at all." He has it on good authority now that he's seen a real one, in person.
He's still going to eat it. He's going to try anyway. But he smells it, and he looks it over, and he watches the piece Sara took as she chews on it, and he crinkles the foil thoughtfully when she asks him that. Does he have a favorite food?
"Those little - sour octopus gummies Scratch has." It's the only place he's encountered them, so that's his association for them. "And bacon. No, strawberries."
That little wrinkle in his brow gets a look of concern from her, but when he explains his confusion, she blurts out a genuine laugh. "I mean... it looks like bread?" She shrugs. "It's just... it's got bananas baked into it."
She hadn't expected to have to explain the concept of banana bread to him, still smiling as she breaks off another piece and munches on it. Watching his expression curiously when he takes a bite, she nods at his list.
"They make maple bacon donuts. Sweet and salty. They're really good. Though I'd actually kill for some of those sour gummies right now."
He's cautious about it, taking a very small bite in anticipation of not being able to get or keep the food down; to his pleasant surprise, though, it's easier once he gets going. That he likes the taste, the texture, the burst of sweetness from the chocolate chips almost goes without saying and he picks up another, more normal size piece before he bothers answering.
"They'll be there when we go back, no need to kill anyone," he points out, but there's a lighter note; he's kidding, too. "I've heard of doughnuts. I haven't tried any yet, though. I used to have a whole list." And now that he actually has access to some of the things on that list, he's been wholly distracted by all the things he never imagined to put on it.
She's satisfied, at least, that he's able to keep it down. He needs something to keep him going besides cigarettes and nightmares, and if there's anything that can bring some kind of light into his life right now, she's glad for it.
His joke is surprising, welcome, though a lot of things about him are surprising. She gives him a smile, munching on another piece. "Used to?"
"There was a blackout in 2022 that wiped out most of the digital data in the world - including cultural contributions like music and movies, but some survived, and there were physical copies then. VHS tapes, records, film reels," K explains, perhaps unwittingly also explaining why he likes listening to music from 1966 and Joi displayed a lot of retro clothing in the memory. It doesn't occur to him as odd, personally. "I liked watching them but they had a lot of food in them I'd never seen and we could never have reproduced anyway. Olivier salad, spaghetti with meatballs, charlotte russe, milkshakes, boiled eggs, cannolis, sole meunière, bologna, steak and frites."
She's seen the memory, she knows where that last one comes from anyway. He takes another bite of banana bread and takes his time chewing it, too, before he speaks again. "But then I came here and I realized there's no point in having a list. There's so much I've never even heard of, let alone thought to want to try."
She listens curiously, toying with the piece of tin foil in her lap, imagining a world where whole pieces of history, culture were just... lost. Removed in chunks, along with the taste of food and drink.
"Some of that stuff I don't even think I've had," she concedes. What the hell even goes in a charlotte russe? But with all the conveniences of her own world - delivery, melting pots of culture, fast food, convenience stores - she can't imagine a world where you could conjure up a food you'd want to try and not be able to go out and get it.
"You can still have a list. Make sure you've tried the stuff you've always wanted to, on top of everything else." She chews thoughtfully a moment. "What were your favorites? From the movies you watched?
"I just don't want to get too focused on a list when there's... Toast with jelly, and corn on the cob, and cranberry juice." All things that rate five stars in K's book, things that are easy to focus on now that there's someone else here to talk with him about it rather than focusing on the menace still lurking in the back of his thoughts.
He actually leans forward a bit toward her, relaxing into the conversation, his answer ready to that question.
"Turkish delight," he answers immediately. "Or couscous. But I always thought a candy good enough to distract you from finding your family must be particularly delicious, so. Turkish delight. Have you ever had it?"
"God, you really do like all of it, don't you?" she chuckles. Cranberry juice was only ever good with vodka, in her opinion, but she's not here to judge. "There's so much more, though. Pizza, my god. Tell me you've had pizza."
She reaches out to brush a crumb of banana bread off the front of his shirt, brow furrowing as she remembers the flash of blood there - the bullet she'd buried into his chest - before she blinks it away, glancing back up at him.
"From the Narnia movie? God, I forgot about those." She chuckles, shaking her head. "I've had it a few times in Istanbul. It's good. Sweet, chewy. I like the ones with chopped nuts in them the best."
"I haven't had pizza," he regrets to inform her - and it is a regret if she's saying that's her critical food for him to have had. He's still while she reaches towards him, glancing down, but he doesn't stop her or pull away.
He does nod to confirm - "The book," though - before getting distracted by her answer.
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Did he really only change, like anyone might under duress? Or is there something wrong with him now that will continue to deteriorate as he goes against his baseline?
What was your most shameful moment?
"Distinct," he whispers, but it's not to her, it's not to anyone, it's just a reflex as sure as blowing in someone's eye will make them blink. He takes a pull off his cigarette like he doesn't even know he said it, lets the smoke out on a long, shaky breath, and then he's talking to her again.
"I don't remember all of it," he says again, honestly. "But it's a blade runner. I'm a rogue replicant. There's only one way that ends." And it probably has something to do with why his right eye aches more, is less reliable, than his left just now. "And when it ended - there's. We're always told it's impossible for any of us to remember the factory, or the repair facility. We're offline. We're not aware of anything, we're so many pounds of synthetic meat and manufactured bone. But I've always thought..." He shakes his head, shivers without being able to stop it.
"Maybe I only imagine that I do remember."
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If humans had a baseline test, she would've failed hers a long time ago. She wasn't anywhere close to the girl who'd left on that boat all those years ago. Scared, selfish, innocent.
"What?" She frowns, barely catching the word under his breath. But he breezes past it before she has a chance to latch on, and when he shudders, something cold runs down her own spine, her fingers threading through his.
"Is that the first memory you have?" False memory or not, it's a horrifying one to have rattling around in your brain. "Do you... do they give you memories? A childhood?"
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He doesn't have to talk about that one, not really, it's only a question.
"Humans sometimes talk about us being kept in drawers, in lockers, when we're not doing our jobs. That's what I remember. A space too small to move in, that you have to push against the sides to take a deep breath. No light. No sound. Not until they open it up and let us out, wrapped up in plastic, ready to ship. I don't know if it's real or not, but when I have bad dreams, it's always that." A sense memory he can't place - not quite real, not quite not.
"They do," he says, one more pull off the cigarette and it's done, he has to put it out. "LAPD paid for twelve for me. They must have anticipated a lot of trauma, the need for a lot of stability. Some of those memories are of growing up, yes."
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The way he describes it makes her uneasy, wraps around her lungs and squeezes. "That's where he took you." When he'd disappeared. That's where he'd trapped him the second time. When she wasn't around to stop it.
Her fingers curl against his, like she needs the assurance that he's here. That he'd made it out of that place, made it back. Twelve memories doesn't seem like nearly enough. He deserves better. Deserves more, a hell of a lot more than most of the humans she knows.
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He wishes he could turn on a light, maybe he'd feel better, but even with just the window letting slivers in from the Down outside it's already more than he'd had there. He looks down at where her fingers are clasped around his, possessive almost, like she can keep him here with her. That's what it feels like to him: anchoring, to here and to now and to whatever version of being alive this is for him.
"I know - it's hard to understand." He's trying. He'll always try, it's not in him to stop, even if his determination is dead silent alongside most others. "Is there anything you just know is absolutely wrong? Something so... anathema to everything you are and everything you're supposed to be that no one needs it explained that it's shameful, and terrible, and pathetic?"
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She tries to suck in a breath, the air shallow in her lungs, the darkness and the smoke thick in the air around them. If she's his anchor, he's just as much hers. She stares down at their hands, chewing at the inside of her lip as she thinks on his question. There's a dry laugh on her lips, one that doesn't have any real mirth to it.
"Shameful and terrible is pretty much where I live," she admits, the pad of her thumb tracing the curve of his wrist. "But I chose that path. You... you don't deserve that."
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His answer is immediate, not argumentative or aggressive but still firm. He might not have said it before all this, but now? Now it's hammered home to him that he's a traitor, he's dangerous, he is everything he's ever hunted and worse because he absolutely knew better and chose to do it anyway.
And he did: "I chose to go rogue. Like I know both that I was never a child but I have memories of an orphanage, I know that what I did was the right thing to do and that it was the wrong thing for me to do. I did it knowing what the consequence was. I did it knowing that it went against everything I was created to do. I'm not sorry I did it, but right now -"
His breath comes faster as he speaks, hitching with the leftovers both of what really happened and what the nightmare branded into his mind; he hadn't intended to sacrifice himself. It's only that the programming that he betrayed was stronger than the knowledge that he'd do it again exactly like he did before, and left him drowning.
"Right now I feel like I deserve worse."
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"Stop- hey, look at me." She looks him squarely in the eyes, steady. "Just because something was programmed into you doesn't make it right. Those rules, those guidelines, they were created by people, right? Fallible, human people, and humans are shit at choosing right from wrong. So you going rogue, that was your choice to do what you thought was right. And I'd trust that judgment over any of those assholes I saw at the station."
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So she reaches for him and tells him to look at her and he goes still, goes quiet, and looks back. He listens, and he knows she's right, he knows he made the right call, he does. He does.
(You imagined it was you? Oh, you did.)
"That doesn't make it easy," he manages, brow furrowed, only barely managing to keep meeting her eyes.
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Her touch is light, but insistent. And when she's sure he won't fight her on that, she lets her hands slip back down into her lap, searching his features quietly.
"Nothing about where you come from is easy. But it's like I told you. You don't have to stick by those rules anymore. No one here sees you as... as they did."
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Los Angeles was terrible, it was dying, but it was home; the rules he was subject to there were exacting, were harsh, but there were rules. He thinks he could like the comparative freedom, perhaps, if it didn't feel like trying to balance on a high wire without a net - and isn't that a traitorous thought, too?
"Not no one," he adds after a moment, gesturing at the black mark down his throat, at the mess that is his head. "I'm trying," he promises, a faint note of something like desperation woven through.
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He reminds her of the mark that signifies his standing here, arbitrary as it is. She frowns at it, gaze lingering there for a moment.
"I know you are," she concedes quietly. "But you're not alone, okay? This... this place is a mess, but it can be better than it was at home. It will be."
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He'd been warned about the ways the city, the program have of knocking its subjects down a rung. Nothing could have prepared him for this though.
He nods, even if he can't quite smile yet. He hears her. He acknowledges her. He'll do his level best to believe her.
"Will you -" He stops, licks his lips, tries again. "Can we talk about something good?"
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She studies him curiously, anticipating a request, already half agreeing to whatever the hell it is - if it'll help. If it'll cushion the below. When it actually lands, she sputters out a soft laugh, smiling down at her hands.
"That I can do," she replies, lifting her gaze to his again. "You hungry?" She slips off the bed, reclaiming the backpack she'd brought and digging around in it for a lump wrapped in foil. "Barry made... I dunno what this is. Banana bread, maybe."
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He still nods, he still agrees that he is, but it's rote; his stomach is as unsettled as the rest of him and he honestly has no idea how this is going to go, but he'll try. For Sara, he'll try, and even he can recognize that under normal circumstances he would be enthusiastically agreeing.
"I've never had banana bread," he offers, moving to the edge of the bed himself, scrubbing his hands down his face and through his hair in hopes it will clear his mind a bit more. "The cookies were amazing." Not an uncommon review, from him.
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There's not much light in his eyes now, though. Not after that thing had gone and snuffed it out. Still, he's trying, like he said he would, and at the very least he has to be starving from everything he's just been though.
She toes off her boots, unwraps the tin foil and perches back onto the edge of the bed next to him, crossing her legs underneath herself and offering it out for him to break off a piece. "It's good. There's chocolate chips in it." She grabs a piece for herself, munching on it thoughtfully, trying hard not to keep looking over him, keep checking to make sure he's not crumbling.
"I think pretty much everything he makes is amazing. But I'm shit in the kitchen." She offers a small smile. "Do you have a favorite food?"
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He's still going to eat it. He's going to try anyway. But he smells it, and he looks it over, and he watches the piece Sara took as she chews on it, and he crinkles the foil thoughtfully when she asks him that. Does he have a favorite food?
"Those little - sour octopus gummies Scratch has." It's the only place he's encountered them, so that's his association for them. "And bacon. No, strawberries."
He really can't be expected to choose only one.
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She hadn't expected to have to explain the concept of banana bread to him, still smiling as she breaks off another piece and munches on it. Watching his expression curiously when he takes a bite, she nods at his list.
"They make maple bacon donuts. Sweet and salty. They're really good. Though I'd actually kill for some of those sour gummies right now."
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"They'll be there when we go back, no need to kill anyone," he points out, but there's a lighter note; he's kidding, too. "I've heard of doughnuts. I haven't tried any yet, though. I used to have a whole list." And now that he actually has access to some of the things on that list, he's been wholly distracted by all the things he never imagined to put on it.
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His joke is surprising, welcome, though a lot of things about him are surprising. She gives him a smile, munching on another piece. "Used to?"
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She's seen the memory, she knows where that last one comes from anyway. He takes another bite of banana bread and takes his time chewing it, too, before he speaks again. "But then I came here and I realized there's no point in having a list. There's so much I've never even heard of, let alone thought to want to try."
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"Some of that stuff I don't even think I've had," she concedes. What the hell even goes in a charlotte russe? But with all the conveniences of her own world - delivery, melting pots of culture, fast food, convenience stores - she can't imagine a world where you could conjure up a food you'd want to try and not be able to go out and get it.
"You can still have a list. Make sure you've tried the stuff you've always wanted to, on top of everything else." She chews thoughtfully a moment. "What were your favorites? From the movies you watched?
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He actually leans forward a bit toward her, relaxing into the conversation, his answer ready to that question.
"Turkish delight," he answers immediately. "Or couscous. But I always thought a candy good enough to distract you from finding your family must be particularly delicious, so.
Turkish delight. Have you ever had it?"
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She reaches out to brush a crumb of banana bread off the front of his shirt, brow furrowing as she remembers the flash of blood there - the bullet she'd buried into his chest - before she blinks it away, glancing back up at him.
"From the Narnia movie? God, I forgot about those." She chuckles, shaking her head. "I've had it a few times in Istanbul. It's good. Sweet, chewy. I like the ones with chopped nuts in them the best."
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He does nod to confirm - "The book," though - before getting distracted by her answer.
"You've been to Istanbul?"
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