The Other Side - BBC Sherlock Fanfiction

Chapter 15 - Toni Hawkes

Author's Note

I've reached 500 reads! It's a big achievment for me and I'm super happy. Those of you which like the story, which I'm hoping - if you've read this far - will be most of you I would really appreciate it if you spread the word about The Other Side. I'm offering dedications to those who do. :)

I grew up in a happy family, my life was perfect and I had great friends. Until I was 14 I wouldn't have changed anything in my life. That was when things started to go wrong. My parents were out all the time, supposedly working. I knew better, my dad was self-employed, he could make up his own hours and had no need to be working until midnight everyday. They didn't have time to go shopping, they didn't have time to clean, they didn't have time to cook. This left me to try and take care of my one year old brother and do all of the house work on top of school work, needless to say that I didn't see my mates much that year. It was a lot to handle. It doesn't seem like much but, to fourteen year old me it felt like the end of the world.

This carried on until about a month after my 15th birthday. On that day, May 16th my parents died. They told me that it was a car crash but I'm not an idiot, nobody ever got their throat slit by a car. I figured that it had something to do with all the time they'd been spending away. Me and George, my brother, were put into a foster home until it was decided which of our many relatives would be burdened with us. No one was in a hurry to do so. The foster home was okay, I mainly stayed in my room, reading books. It was peaceful and clean and I was as close to content I think I could've been in those few days. It couldn't last. Our Auntie Jackie cam to see us on out third day there. She came to take me to live with her and her son Anthony she said that she couldn't take care of George, not knowing any better I agreed to come with her, expecting to be able to see my brother again soon. I was wrong; I never saw him again.

A few weeks after moving in with my Aunt and I still hadn't settled in. It wasn't that she wasn't trying, because she was, I just couldn't understand why she wouldn't let my brother stay with us too. I gave her grief for it over and over again, blind to the fact that she just couldn't afford to look after the both us. There was another problem, Anthony, everything about him annoyed me. He was just a normal guy, but he was unbelievably infuriating. 

Around the end of my first month there I found out that George had been adopted. The family was Bulgarian, and their name - Drski.

My story is interrupted by Angel.

"No, Toni , you're lying. I don't believe you. You are not baby George's sister. You're lying, I know you are." She refuses, her eyes filling up, on the verge of tears. She fumbles for a hand to hold, the person she finds is Jim. She blinks furiously and bites back the tears.

The men in the room, of course have no idea what we're talking about. They seem, though, to know better than to ask.

"Oh yes." I assure her, "He was my brother too." I see the cogs in Sherlock's head turning, trying to piece together the breadcrumbs I'm leaving him. 

This is where the story stops being about me, I don't matter anymore. This is about my brother and his new family. 

I never got to speak to George on the phone even as he began being able to talk, I doubt whether he even remembered me by then. Still, at my insistence, I was kept posted on his progress, much to the annoyance of the Drski's. They sent me photos of him, he seemed happy in them and I had no reason to believe otherwise. I couldn't visit him, though. He lived a couple of hours away, a bit of a trek but nothing unachievable. They always put it off saying that it would be too much trouble for Jackie, or that they had family staying over - wasn't I family too, though? I guess not.

My aunt kept telling me that they probably just wanted him to settle in before I could see him. From the letters, though, it seemed as if he was getting along just fine and it had been two years, plenty of time to settle. It didn't add up.

I got fed up with the delays eventually and stole the keys to Anthony's car when he was out and drove off, armed with nothing but a map. It was a long as stressful journey, especially as I hadn't actually passed my driving test yet. Eventually, though, I arrived at the address George was supposed to live in.

It was a very small house, which looked like the set of a horror story. There were vines of ivy crawling up the walls like hands desperately reaching up to the sky. The front gate was rusty and falling off its hinges, the front door wasn't in any better state. The paint on the window frames was peeling into vicious curls. The garden standing between me and the house was a mess of thorns, trying to scare me away. 

When I watched horror movies I always used to shout at the idiot who decided to go inside. That was before I'd been in the situation myself. It was like there was nothing else that I could possibly have done except go in. It was clear to me that I wouldn't forgive myself if I ran away and never found out about my brother.

And so, I walked towards the front door on unsteady legs. When I reached it I raised my clenched fist and knocked, only for the door to fall completely off its hinges in a cloud of dust. 

"Hello?" I called out, as if anyone would answer, it was clear that nobody had lived here in years. Even as I said it I knew that it was hopeless. I crept around the house, all of the rooms being empty and rotten. Never the less, the thought that I should leave, I never deemed plausible. I successfully scoured the ground floor, finding nothing of interest. 

I proceeded up the stairs, which creaked routinely. I began to suspect that this was all set up; I was supposed to come there and find nothing. The upstairs was composed of a corridor with several rooms going off from it, each as empty as the next - until I reached the final one, because, it's always the last room that you look in which holds the surprise...

I tiptoed in, not wanting to disturb the heaving floorboards beneath me. At a first glance it appeared to be no different from the rest, until I saw a lonely envelope standing solemnly against the far wall, it was addressed to me. Hands shaking, I picked it up, dreading what I might find.

Dear Antonia Hislop,

This is a letter about what happened to your brother. 

As I know that you know your brother, George, was adopted not long after you were taken in by your Aunt Jacqueline (who I believe you call Jackie?). You were told, I am sure that he was adopted by the Drski family, from Bulgaria. This is in part true. Your brother was, in fact, taken in by a man named Gavrail Drski. He did not, however, have a wife nor two sons. You're probably wondering why he lied? He trained assassins and picked your brother out as someone with potential.

I'm sorry that this happened to you, usually he picks teenagers. Being barely a child George didn't respond 'accordingly' to the training given to him. Gavrail decided that he wasn't worth keeping and asked me to kill him, and not get caught.

I stopped reading there and ripped up the rest of the letter, keeping only what I had read intact. My brother, George, was dead. 

It was that moment that I swore to get revenge on Gavrail and his minion. The only problem was, I had no lead. I rifled through the shreds of paper until I found the signature Angelina Drski.