Fire, Burning, Death, Suffering. Robert woke up in a blood lust scream, scaring Miranda awake too. She grabbed his shoulders, trying to calm him. He was panting, heavily, with cold sweats. she worriedly said"What's wrong?" After a few more pants he said "Mindoir." She hugged him, as she knew he watched his parents die on that planet when he was sixteen at the hands of Batarian. This is all she knew, as was said in his dossier, but she wanted to know more. "Tell me what happened to you that day." He leaned up against the headboard and began to tell her.
"I hated living on Mindoir, nothing but bumpkins and agriculture, but then those squinty bastards came in. It's almost like I got what I wished, but...not like that. A mortar blast hit my house, trapping me under rubble, hardly even hurting me, just trapping me. I have no idea how I lived, but what I would witness next makes me wish it had killed me. A pair of them entered the house, my dad grabbed his rifle, but he was no warrior, he was an element zero miner and a farmer...they shot his arm off, and dragged him to the barn, I didn't see it, but from what I would see later they decapitated him and hung him from a hook like a piece of meat. When they found my mom, she tried to fight, but they beat her...and ...took turns raping her, until they delivered a single shot to her face from a shotgun. As they looted the house I managed to get free, and I slipped out silently. I could have run, found safety, but...I wanted revenge, I wanted to butcher them and tear out their eyes one by one. So I took a piece of jagged metal from the rubble, and when one slipped into a room I followed, and slit his throat, and repeatedly stabbed him in the head, until there was nothing solid left of it. I took his assault rifle, and shot his friends legs out. He squirmed and screamed, trying to reach for his shotgun, but I stomped on his hand, and heard the bones crunch. I took the butt of the rifle and began to smash it into his face, watching the blood spurt from his maimed eye sockets like a fountain. He begged for mercy, saying he was just there for the job, he was just following orders. I growled at him, and I noticed the dagger on his belt. I took it and carved my parents names into his chest, and then jammed it into his abdomen, twisted the blade in his guts, and I disemboweled him, and to finish him, I stabbed the blade through his neck, pinning him to the ground. I watched as he squirmed for the last times. I had no idea what to do, I was just pacing aimlessly, like an animal in a cage waiting for the nightmare to end, but I couldn't escape it. I was surprised to see the Alliance Patrol arrive. They didn't even give me a chance to bury my fucking parents! They stuck me in an orphanage for the next 2 years. I eventually joined the Alliance Navy because I figured it was my one chance to see all the worlds, and maybe I could kill some Batarians while I was at it. "
She looked horrified, astonished, not at what he had done, but what he had to see. She could tell he had replayed these events in his head countless times. She thought to herself This definitely explains his actions on Torfan. She took his head in her hands and said "you aren't alone anymore" and she kissed him. They layed back down with her head on his chest, listening to his calmed hearbeat as he slept.