It's a lot of things. The kids. The fact that he's having trouble accepting that he should be alone and focus on his own claimed family. That it all reminds him that in some ways he's just as needy and shitty as he was as a young man, it's just manifested in different ways.

That his parents left him somewhere to be broken, and he found himself wanting to light candles for them just to snuff them out.

Soldat isn't wrong though. It's programming, but it's programming that is so damn hard to break. It's programming that he almost misses 'cause even a few decades and some change later it feels simpler than the life of poor choices and unfulfilled dreams he walked into.

After another angry, belligerent grunt he stops wiping his face. He's fought back his control between guzzling the water and struggling through his thoughts and the gentle patting at his back. "Swear to god if I could I'd find at least one universe where I ain't done this shit yet an' taken me out before I could try." Which... is probably not the best option when he could warn himself, but that's self-loathing talking. "You're right though. Ain't nothin' better I can do than watch out for the ones here."