A/N: Hey guys, I'm SO excited for this new story! I've got some insane ideas for it, and it's OT4-centric for once. (I typically write lots of Ezria. Speaking of, I have an Ezria story I'm working on along with this one at the moment.) Basically, all the girls are in Radley for a range of reasons, and they'll have to face their own problems along with the issues of their new friends. The biggest question is, will they be able to make it out? Or will staying there brainwash them into thinking they can't return to the world? Stay tuned!

The Crazy Ones

"I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability. That's what we really pay attention to anyway. We don't talk about planes flying; we talk about them crashing."

–Tibor Kalman

Chapter 1: Aria

On the outside, Radley was like any other old building in Rosewood. It was built in beige bricks, with French décor on the windows and a wrought-iron gate surrounding it. Nothing made it special—except for the patients inside.

Because Radley was a mental institution, and its patients were over the charts. The people who stayed there had a range of mental illnesses, from schizophrenia to bulimia to depression. Anyone with a brain problem came there—and most of them didn't believe they had to be there, that they could be treated at home rather than away from it in a place whose reputation made them slip further down the rabbit hole.

Some would argue that many of them were right.

But that wasn't the case for eighteen-year-old Aria Montgomery. She'd been there long enough—ten years, to be exact—to know that Radley was her home, where she belonged. There wasn't much out there in the world for someone who supposedly split into two people, especially for those like her who didn't even realize it. At first, she truly believed there was nothing wrong with her. But the longer she stayed at Radley, the more convinced she became. That was it, then. She had a mental disorder, and, though she never expressed it, she was afraid of what she might do—what her other person might do.

As it turned out, Aria couldn't remember when she became someone else, this double identity that came out any time of the day that she'd never met. And apparently, she'd never told anyone else who her other half was. For the moment, and for the last ten years, she'd only been Aria and Jane Doe.

Now Aria picked up the yellow tank top and examined it, trying to remember the last time she wore a bright color. Was it seven, when she had the spring-colored dress of yellows, greens, and pinks? It was hideous, looking back on it. But she was a kid. Young, innocent, pure—and all alone in her head.

"Where are you heading off to?" Aria asked the blonde with her back facing her, folding clothes into a suitcase. It was a rare occasion to see someone pack their bags to leave Radley. The entire day they'd been visited by spectators casually walking past the room on their group meal time. Playing with the layers of the yellow top, Aria spread out the fabric and folded it across her arm before—impulsively—stuffing it under her in-style Radley robe. She liked the color; it made her smile, an even rarer occurrence than people being released from Radley.

"Home," the blonde girl sighed as she stuffed her few things in her bag hastily.

"Really?" Aria readjusted the balled-up shirt under her robe. "I assumed you'd want to go somewhere else."

The blonde spun around, hand on hip, glaring daggers at Aria. "Like where?"

Seeing the menacing glint in her ex-roommate's eyes, Aria just shrugged and sat on the edge of her bed. "I don't know. Paris, I guess. Somewhere far away from your family."

The blonde packed faster, more anxious. "And why would I want to leave my family?"

With a mysterious, unreadable smirk on her face, Aria simply said, "I think we both know the answer to that question." To most, the answer was cryptic, but to the ex-roommate, it sent a shiver up her spine and she zipped shut her bag, gunned it out the door, and met her dad in the lobby. She didn't look back until her dad took her hand, despite her being eighteen-years-old, and she dared to peek. There, in the hallway, behind the locked gates that separated the patients' rooms from the nurse's station, was Aria, watching like any bystander.

Aria wasn't a creepy person. But there was something inside her that scared the blonde teenager. Her alter ego, she guessed. Yes, Alison had told her she'd met her other half, sometimes in the dead of night when she nearly scared her to death. Aria stood in front of the gates with her arms crossed, like nothing was the matter.

Like she hadn't lost her third roommate.

It was common for Radley patients to be moved around, but a lot of the ones who stayed the longest kept the same roommates in order to keep the calm and serenity instead of sending some of the patients on panicked raids from their lives being chipped just the slightest. However, Aria was not the overly controlling type to have panic attacks from the people in her life being shifted around. In fact, it was more interesting that way. She loved meeting new people in Radley. It meant a fresh start to get to know someone before they found out the reason she was there.

Aria stayed in that spot long after Alison left. Turning on her heels, Aria padded back to her room and decided to clean up for the arrival of her next roommate—whenever that would be. She tucked the sheets tighter, fluffed the pillow more, and even dusted the tiny closet in which only a few measly dresses hung. They were the clothes she was allowed to have; the clothes her parents sent through the mail rather than gift her in person. They were all black, gray, or navy. The dark colors soothed her; but now, adding the yellow top to her collection, things felt brighter. More hopeful. If Alison could leave Radley, maybe she could, too. One day, when she stopped thinking of it as the place she belonged.

Propping herself on her bed, Aria reached out to one of the three dolls she brought with her when her parents drove her to Radley that chilly, wind-less January morning. At first the staff fought over whether she was allowed three or only one of her dolls; after all, the hospital supplied the children's ward with toys. But nothing could be done until the psych evaluation. Sitting in a room as her parents' anxiously twiddled their thumbs and the gray-haired man in the desk chair asked her question after question stuck with her to this day. When asked "Do you have any friends?" little, sweet eight-year-old Aria shook her head. "Only one," she'd answered, "but she's not here with me. May I play with my dolls now?"

Aria was in the process of brushing her Victorian-era doll's silky curls when a nurse knocked on her door. "You have a visitor," she announced. Calmly, Aria checked the calendar on her wall. It was a Tuesday; the only person who visited her came on Thursdays. Curious, she laid the doll down on her pillow and followed the nurse to the dayroom.

It was obvious who the guest was in the dayroom, as he was the only person not wearing a white coat or a beige uniform. Instead, he was dressed in a men's green dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and khaki pants. The majority of patients in the room were staring at him in fascination. The ones who weren't were too medicated to notice.

He turned around and removed his hands from his pockets when he saw Aria and the nurse approaching from the corner of his eye. Crossing her arms at her chest, Aria tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. When it came to strangers—healthy strangers—she was always ready to put up a tough front. She needed a thick skin for those who refused to walk around in her shoes and try to understand what it was like to lose control of your brain every now and then. To them, she was just crazy.

"I hope you don't mind if I get straight to the point," the man said while reaching out his hand for a shake. "My name's Ezra Fitz." Aria's eyes darted from Ezra's outstretched hand to his innocent face, but she didn't uncross her arms. The nurse stepped away to the corner for more privacy. (Not that Aria had to be supervised in visits. She was a good girl, after all.) Clearing his throat uncomfortably, he let his hand fall back to his side and continued, "I'm writing a book on multiple personality disorder. The staff here was very helpful in finding me a source. Please, sit."

Reluctantly, Aria sat in the chair he was gesturing to and noticed the pad and pens placed on the table, patiently waiting to be used. "What if I don't want to help you?" she asked as Ezra scooted closer to the edge of his chair and picked up a pen.

"That's completely your choice. Say the word, and you'll never see me again."

Aria chewed on the inside of her cheek. This man would very soon know that she'd be of very little help. And what else did she have to do today, anyway? She leaned back in her chair and held her head high. "Ask away."

Pen poised over the pad, he smiled at her as he asked the first question. "How many personalities do you have?"

The only question she could answer with certainty. "One."

Ezra wrote the number one and circled it on his pad. "And how would you describe this other personality?"

Grinning forcefully, Aria tried not to look sour. "I think it's better to ask my doctors that question. They've actually met her. But I hear she's a delight."

Lying in bed that night, Aria stared at the concrete ceiling and let her mind wander, about where Alison was to what Mona, her first roommate, was doing to what Ezra was writing. Who tried to understand mental illness, anyway? It was going to be a fruitless attempt at making every person in Radley be accepted outside these walls. But she appreciated his efforts.

Aria glanced at the barred window, where moonlight was seeping through onto the floors and walls. Maybe the people here didn't want to get better, or the people working here didn't want their patients to get better. Maybe the entire sanitarium was just a way of separating the truly insane or socially unacceptable from the normal, "healthy" outsiders. Her parents had given up on her; for years she wondered if they brought her to Radley just so they could continue the normal life they'd planned. No parent enjoyed bringing up their child's illness if it couldn't be explained away as "just a broken bone that will heal."

Somehow her brain was able to leap over these mind-consuming thoughts and shut down. Soon, Aria was dreaming about flying, flying away from this place, to an island far from Rosewood. She swam through the starry, moonlit sky with ease, her heart thumping in excitement as the island came closer. But then she glanced up at her wings and they were weighed down by chains. Down she went, falling to the ground, and was swallowed into the gates of Hades.

Waking up, she was standing in front of a window, her hands clasped around the bars and her eyes boring into the full, glowing moon. But she wasn't in her room anymore. Some time, as Aria or as Aria 2.0, she'd raised out of her bed and went into the closed children's ward.

She didn't know why she or her other identity would want to be down here in this damp, creepy, haunted place where cribs were made with bars and the dolls were missing eyes from the children digging them out from boredom. Maybe it had to do with how she'd stayed in this place for two years before it'd been shut down.

Maybe it had to do with rewinding time, to believing she was nothing more than a little girl who wasn't possessed by an unknown entity.

The faceless, nameless entity that she simply called many names. Jane Doe. Aria 2.0. Anonymous.

But her favorite name for it was a simple letter A.