I made myself sad.
I started playing with an angsty idea where, post Dispatch, some remnants of the Red Ring come together to kidnap Robert in order to get revenge for the whole Shroud thing. He's gone for months before he's finally found and rescued, but the experience fucked him up a lot.
For some reason, Flambae is the only person he seems to feel safe around and trust. Eventually it's revealed that, while he was captured, a power was used on him that basically kept him in a near constant dream state that felt very real. He was tormented with constant nightmares of thinking he was saved, only to constantly watch the people he cared about die over and over again. So now that he's put, he can't fully accept or believe that it's real when he sees any of them, except for Flambae.
The people that were doing this, never included Flambae as being one of the people who came to Robert's rescue, since they believed they hated each other, and so Robert knows for certain things must be real if he's around.
