Lucifer is the villain of his story. Trusting is near impossible for him, but this world can be a second chance and many of us have taken it. If Catra wants the same, it'll be here. And you too.

[ Istredd doesn't have people he worries about back home, he doesn't have friends. Triss, maybe, but he knows she's safe in Aretuza currently, training the next generation. Yennefer is here with him, and any other friend he's ever had in his life, he's made here. Lucifer's long, long existence was mostly a nightmare, and so he became a worse nightmare. It's not an excuse, but an explanation.]

I didn't have a choice, I was a child. I don't remember my life before.

[ Maybe around the edges if he really thinks about it, but he doesn't remember a family. It's possible Stregobor got rid of the time before, but he also doesn't really care about it. The past doesn't say much about the future, at least not in that instance.]

Magic can kill mages if we don't learn how to control it, so they find us and train us. If we survive the experience, we graduate and go into different branches from there. I went into research.

[ It probably sounds similar to militaristic mindsets, and it's not entirely outside of that. There are ranks and orders and expectations of lifetime service. He shakes his head. ]

But that's the thing about raising children to be soldiers, isn't it? What else do we know but following orders? The only family we have is them, the only life we know is them.

[ He's using 'we' because it seems that they both went through the same kind of upbringing, if slightly different only in terms of their jobs. ]

Would you do that to a child now? I know I wouldn't.