At Full Brightness {All the Bright Places alternate ending}

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Hi people, welcome to my second story! I was devastated after finishing 'All the Bright Places' and I wanted to try and create a different and more hopeful ending. I'll update short chapters regularly, and I really hope you enjoy! Thanks :) 

PS - this story starts just before Finch is about to commit suicide, but story continues after the ending of the original book. So bear with me over the next few chapters...

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Finch

I taste metal from biting my tongue. Little Bastard is trying its best, the steering wheel vibrating under my clenched fists - but it's still not fast enough.

How fast do you have to be going to leave your mind behind? 

I once told myself that if I ever tried to commit suicide, I wouldn't miss. And maybe now where I can hardly trust my mind at all, at least I trust in that.

I wish I had more time. I wish I'd left more for Violet than the last five wanderings - such an effing try hard - I wish I could have said goodbye properly. I didn't want to fight with her.

She deserves so, so much better than me. 

Violet

In all the books I've read, it's easy to sense death. It's foreshadowed in every carefully-chosen word, known in the heart of all the characters.

But I know death, and it's not like that. I've stood right beside death and walked away a survivor, and I know that it's not something you ever see coming. 

It's Sunday when Finch's sister, Kate, knocks on the door. When I see her face it doesn't sink in straight away, of course it doesn't. 

She looks like him, something about her jawline and in the shape of her eyes. It's eerie because I haven't seen Finch for over a month, and his absence flares up suddenly after days of numbness. 

Where are you, where are you? 

Finch

I jerk the car to a halt so fast it screams in protest. Then I run, but even running doesn't save me this time, I can't move fast enough to block out the static in my head, the weight that's pressing down and down and down and oh god what am I doing what the hell am I doing

But there's no me anymore, there's no Finch, there's just thousands of echoes of him in my mind and they're all pressing down in an awful, screaming mess. 

I'm up the hill, I'm stumbling through the rings of trees, and the lake is there. The blue hole.

The water's completely still. It could easily be as shallow as a coin - you'd never know about the  vast, vast darkness stretching way down into the earth. 

I'm shaking as I reach the lake's edge, staring down into the water. My face is reflected back at me, panting and terrified with far too big eyes. 

I'm filled with repulsion so strong that I stagger backwards, dropping to my knees with my head in my hands. My breath is coming in jagged gasps. I'm crying into my fists, wet and ugly and loud.

 I just want this to stop.