I do not own any rights concerning the Divergent trilogy. The italic words are from the book and everything not italicized are my alternative ending. Please review with your thoughts on my writing, the books, ect. Thanks for reading.
When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, nut warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable-except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first. Even I didn't jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful. But that wasn't the first time I ever saw her. I saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped. I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last. I go to see her body… sometime. I don't know how long it is after Cara tells me what happened. Christina and I walk shoulder to shoulder; we walk in Cara's footsteps. I don't remember the journey from the entrance to the morgue, really, just a few smeared images and whatever sound I can make out through the barrier that has gone up inside my head. She lies on a table, and for a moment I think she's just sleeping, and when I touch her, she will wake up and smile at me and press a kiss to my mouth. But when I touch her she is cold, her body stiff and unyielding. Christina sniffles and sobs. I squeeze Tris's hand, praying that if I do it hard enough, I will send life back into her body and she will flush with color and wake up. I don't know how long it takes me to realize that isn't going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do I feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more…
In the next few days, the grief compiles, pressing down on me and crushing me. My worst fear has come true and everything else fades into the background. There is no way out of this fear landscape, no way but one.
I steal a truck and make my way back to the city. Once there, I hop onto the first train that comes by and ride. I ride for hours and hours, losing myself even more to the sadness that comes with the memories of her. I am angry and sad and lost. I am lost in this world without her. There is no reason for me to be without her.
When the train comes upon the Dauntless compound, I jump off and onto the building. Feeling the wind whip my clothes, I cross over to hole where we are expected to jump as initiates.
She jumped first… She jumped first and I helped her off of the net and she was there with me and now she's not, but she was and…
I grab my head as I sink into a ball on the ground crying. She became my everything. She was the fire that gave me purpose and without her I have nothing.
I get up and cross back to the edge of the roof near the tracks. I look down and find that my fear of heights is muted, numb under the pain of her being gone and the fear of a life without her. I shuffle my feet so that my toes hang over the side of the building.
In the fear landscape, to move on you must either slow your heart rate to normal or conquer your fear by doing something that would make it worse, but life is not the fear landscape. I can't fix my broken heart and I can't face life without my sun. I can slow my heart rate; I can make it so slow that it doesn't beat at all. I can beat this fear landscape; I can beat it by stopping my heart. All I have to do is jump…
And I do.