Sam has come to love the Grid in the short amount of time he's been here. If it's this incredible while Clu is ruining everything, it must have really been something in its heyday. He tries to imagine what the ISO cities looked like, or how much safer this place felt when Tron was still active. It's strange to feel nostalgia for something he never knew, but a kind of sadness washes over Sam as he looks out at the city from the balcony of the hideout in the outlands. He needed some air after hearing how everything went wrong the night his dad didn't come home. It's hard to reconcile the violence he's just heard about with the peaceful looking city in front of him.
His dad is somewhere behind him, unsure of what to say. That's another oddity. Sam doesn't remember him ever being so quiet.
"I'm sorry it all fell apart," Sam says, breaking the silence. "Everything you worked for..."
He doesn't understand the guilt he feels, as if his dad resents him for not finding this place sooner and fixing things from the other side. Defeating Clu might be as simple as a few keystrokes out there, but Sam has a habit of leaping before he looks. And where does he get that from?
"Not everything," Flynn says. The sound of his dad's voice startles Sam, and there's sadness in his voice, but not as much as there might be. "Don't get me wrong, I've always cared about the Grid- probably more than I should have. And I considered Tron and Clu my friends. None of them were ever just programs to me. But I wasn't just building this world for them, either; I was doing it for you. For your future." Flynn steps closer, places a hand on his son's shoulder, and for a moment they share broken smiles. "That's what I was working for, on both sides of the screen. I wanted to create an amazing world for you to grow up in. At least one."
Sam shakes his head, even as some tiny part of him rejoices that his dad never wanted or chose to leave him behind. He did care. Maybe too much.
"But that wasn't what I wanted," Sam says, and their smiles falter. "I just wanted you to be there in the real world. I wanted you to come back. I never wanted anything else."
This time Flynn gets a proper hug.