Hard Knocks

A/N: I've second-guessed myself a lot with this chapter. Basically, I have no idea if it's any good or not. Sooo...tell me? :3 Preferably in a review. Or a PM. But you don't have to. But we are almost at 100 reviews, and I get to celebrate every time I hit 100 reviews on a story, soo :3 thanks you guys. Thank you so much, :)

Hiccup couldn't think what was wrong.

Nonetheless, when he awoke he knew something was wrong, and it didn't take long for him to realize that someone was pounding and kicking at the door, demanding entry. He stumbled to his feet with the intention of letting the knocker in, as the doors had a tendency to jam, or at least the ones down this hallway, and nobody had yet discovered why, or made a move to tell the headmistress, so they remained as they were.

However, as Hiccup approached the door, it flew open of its own accord, waking Gustav, and a woman walked in, her every step making a clacking sound. When Hiccup looked down, he realized she was wearing high heels. The expression on her face made him very aware of the fact that his hair was plastered to the side of his head from sleep, and it made him certain that she was aware of it, too. Behind her, Hiccup could see some other boys in the orphanage had gathered into a small crowd, having been woken by the racket.

The woman was pretty, Hiccup supposed, in her own way. Her hair was frosty blond and short, cut in layers, with straight bangs hanging down past her eyes, giving her a bored look. She resembled their headmistress, loosely, but she was at least twenty years younger, and she looked stricter. Hiccup wondered if she was somebody's mother before catching sight of the engagement ring on her hand.

The woman glanced around the room, her nose wrinkling as she took in everything about it, all at once: the unmade beds, the rumpled clothes on the floor that somebody had carelessly thrown there a few nights ago – Hiccup certainly hadn't done that, and neither had Gustav. When the woman spoke, her voice was sharp and clear as glass. "She really should get these doors fixed." She motioned to the one she had just been wrestling with, distaste clear in her eyes. "And this place is an absolute dump heap."

Hiccup felt a hot surge of boiling anger at these words. The headmistress tried her best to keep things neat, and the boys helped her sometimes – although boys, by nature, were messy creatures, they did try to help her with everything – and this woman had no right to go on about it like it was the city dump or something.

"Who are you?" One brave soul from the crowd of boys called out, and the woman whipped around, icy blue eyes narrowed, looking for the one who had dared question her. Perhaps she deemed it best to answer the inquiry, however, for after a moment, she gave up.

"I am Mrs. Hannigan's niece," she informed them haughtily, lifting her chin and displaying her power here. "You may call me Mrs. Cambridge." She gestured to the sparkling engagement ring on her hand. "She – my aunt – was diagnosed with the flu yesterday, at her doctor's appointment, and as they recommended her to take a few days off, she asked me to fill in and watch over you brats until she can come back."

There was something about the way she said 'brats' that made every boy gathered there just stare blankly back at her. Mrs. Hannigan had never spoken to them like this before, when she bothered to speak to them at all. With thirty kids, and trying to stretch her time in between each one, she never had enough time.

"And as I was saying," Mrs. Hannigan's niece's eyes flicked back around the room again, "this is a filthy place. You ought to clean it while she's gone."

None of the boys answered, still staring back at her. Hiccup could sense Gustav's feelings about this woman already, so he drew in a deep breath, deciding to be the first one to speak. The woman might speak sharply, but if she was a relative of Mrs. Hannigan's, she couldn't be that bad.

"Alright. We'll go down and get something to eat, and then we'll get started." Hiccup nodded at her to let her know her orders were being heeded, but Mrs. Cambridge merely raised her eyebrows disbelievingly, as if she found him intolerably insolent.

"No, you won't."

Hiccup, feeling taken aback, stared at her for a moment, trying to think of the one thing she didn't want them to do. But she'd just told them to clean, and he wasn't saying they wouldn't…

"You won't get breakfast until this place is spotless, come on."

Hiccup was glad that the other boys broke into a chorus of whispers and protests, because that meant the woman looked away from him to give his compatriots a swift, stern look, because he was sure that the disbelief at her words was showing on his face. Mrs. Hannigan was relatively on the poor side of things, so it was no wonder that Hiccup knew what it was like to be hungry. He knew what it was like to go to bed without anything akin to supper, and what it was like to have pains because of the lack of food, but Mrs. Hannigan had never starved them on purpose. She divided the food as evenly as she could among them all, and did her best to make sure everyone got something, no matter how small that something was. She had never used food as an ultimatum, or motivation.

Finding he could keep quiet no longer, he stepped forward just to get her attention, crossing his arms. "Isn't this, maybe, I don't know, illegal?" He took a step closer to Mrs. Cambridge.

The woman, who had been scolding a few of the younger boys for their obvious dismay, rose to her full height, her eyes flashing. "What's your name?"

"Hiccup." He said the word proudly, for it was his name, and it was the name that his mother had given him, wherever she was.

Mrs. Cambridge's smile was tight and cold. "I can see why."

With no advance warning, without any kind of expression at all, Mrs. Cambridge reached out and slapped him across the face, with such force that he fell to the ground, though this could have been from shock. No one had ever hit him before, and it hurt far worse than he thought it would. He grasped at his face, little noises of pain escaping him as Gustav rushed over, trying to pry his hand away from his face so he could see the damage.

"All of you, get to work," the woman addressed all the boys now, turning away from Hiccup as if she hadn't just done something that most would call inhumane. "And you get breakfast afterward." She turned to leave, but she stopped halfway there, turning back to Hiccup, her nostrils flaring as she regarded him. "Except for you." She really did leave then, turning and sweeping from the room, her ridiculous high heels clacking with every step.

Gustav dealt with the blow far worse than Hiccup did. He started crying the instant Mrs. Cambridge left the room, cried so hard that one of the other boys finally got it into his head to close the door, so she couldn't yell at Gustav for his noisy tears.

Hiccup drew an arm around the boy's shoulders, pulling him into a comforting embrace, wishing someone would do the same for him. But he was all alone, and there was no one to protect him from what was to come.

The boys kept looking uncomfortably at the rapidly forming bruise on Hiccup's cheek, and then swiftly cutting their eyes back to the floor, as if afraid to be caught staring. Knowing he had to distract them, Hiccup forced himself to his feet. His legs felt very shaky, like they wouldn't support him. "C'mon," he said, gesturing for the other boys to follow him out the door, "she said she wanted the place spotless, and we'd probably better listen."

Maybe the boys saw some sense in what Hiccup was saying, or maybe none of them felt like getting the same treatment he had; but whatever caused it, they glanced around for a second or two, then slowly began to nod, following him out the door.

Hiccup's cheek still hurt, and he could feel his lips trembling, tears threatening to stream down his face, but he couldn't cry in front of Gustav. He wouldn't cry, because Gustav needed him too badly right now for him to shed a single tear. He had not cried in so long, because the last time he had, one of the boys had told him it was weak. He hadn't said it meanly, or insinuated that he thought Hiccup actually was weak – he'd just told him that you just didn't cry in the orphanage, because yeah, life was full of hard knocks, but you just didn't do it. Hiccup had seen the truth in what he'd said, and he hadn't cried since.

He bit down on his lip so hard it bled, but it stopped trembling, and he didn't cry. The taste of blood filled his mouth as he started to work, and the day soon passed in an endless flurry of scrubbing and washing.