Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



I never knew what was worse: running into humans and getting the blunt end of the stick or traveling for hours in the dead silence with only the thoughts in your head to keep you from going insane.

"You called?" said a cheery voice, and I turned to look at my passenger seat to see a girl looking exactly like me with pigtails in her hair and wearing a very dusty blue dress with a black and white checkered apron.

"I don't know. Did I?" I asked with a smile. "Hello, Crazy,"

"Hello, main personality," she replied with a big smile on her face. "Admit it; you missed us."

I chuckled at her statement because up until this point, no, I hadn't really missed them at all. 

"Well, now I am crushed," said Crazy with a shrug, seemingly anything but crushed. "But that's okay. Something tells me that I am going to be visiting you a lot for the next little while."

"Probably," I admitted. "After all, I would have to be more than a little crazy to leave the peace and quiet of the life I was living to return here."

"Not like I am complaining by any means, but why did you leave?" asked Crazy, looking over at me. I must have been mistaken because I thought for sure that I saw a trace of pity on her face. 

"Because even if there is no medicine for regret, I currently have the chance to change the future and fix my biggest regret. I would be a fool not to take it," I said with a shrug. 

"You might be crazy, but you are no fool. Who is the healer to you?" 

"I feel like she was me in my first life," I said at long last. "She sacrificed everything for a stranger that she barely knew and died without truly experiencing life."

"Well, that is a bit presumptuous of you, don't you think?" demanded Crazy, looking at me like I was…well… crazy. "How do you know that she didn't get to experience the life that she wanted and that she died without regrets, knowing that you got away?" 

"I was locked in a cage big enough to fit a medium dog. I was beaten, I was… abused, and I was forced to fight for the enjoyment of others every night. And every night, she sat there in the cage beside me and held my hand. How could that be what she wanted for her life?"

"Now," said Crazy, holding up her hands, "Just hear me out. How do you know that you didn't arrive at a time in her life when she needed you the most and you were her anchor, that you were the one that convinced her to take one day at a time and keep living when she had long since given up? How do you know that she didn't die with a smile on her face, knowing that she did everything she could to save you and you got away?"

I thought about what Crazy said, and I had to admit that maybe she was right. Maybe I was looking at it from a completely egocentric way. Maybe she did choose death, and that was how she wanted to go. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, trying to keep the tears from spilling over. Now was not the time to sit here crying. I was not a victim in this life. I had nothing to cry over.

"You have everything to cry over," pointed out Crazy, really not helping when it came to suppressing my emotions. "I mean, it might not have happened to you in this life, but that doesn't mean you don't still bear the scars and the memories as if it did happen. If you want to cry, cry. And then, when you are done, rip the souls out of every Reaver in that compound and bath in their blood. That's what I would do."

"It bothers me that you are making sense right now," I said, letting out a watery laugh. 

"Being crazy every so often is not a bad thing," replied Crazy with a smile as she turned her attention outside of the passenger window. "It gives you a way out, a way to decompress from all the repressed emotions. Let the feelings come to the surface and exorcise them so they are no longer strong enough to drive you crazy."

Once again, I was left speechless by a side of myself that probably should be locked up in a mental facility of some kind. "We did that once, you know," said Crazy with a smile. "We spent a good ten or fifteen years in a mental hospital. It was some of the best years of our lives up to now."

"It was?" I asked, surprised. Mind you, I wasn't surprised that when Crazy was in charge, we ended up in a psychiatric ward; I was more surprised that it was some of the best years of our lives.

"There is something incredibly freeing to be you without any cares or concerns about the social norms," chuckled Crazy. "You scratched the surface of it in this lifetime but nowhere near where we were before. The key, though, is to rein in the crazy before it takes total control. That was a hard lesson for us to learn."

"Is this your way of telling me that I should let you take control?" I asked with a chuckle.

"Oh, fuck, no," she replied quickly with a shake of her head. "My brand of crazy is on an entirely different level that I don't think your men are prepared for."

I chucked and shook my head. "I might need you, though,' I said softly. Maybe if I could combine Crazy and Psycho, I would be able to get through the compound, rescue the princess, and make it back with enough of me left intact that the guys would still want me.

"And when you do, I am here. And so is Psycho. She would love to come out and play a bit in the pits for a bit. I heard that the blood of your enemies did wonders for your skin," smiled Crazy. "But I don't think you need to worry about your guys wanting you or not wanting you. They are going to be stuck to you like glue during this whole thing. If you let them."