Disclaimer: I obviously don't own Gakuen Alice, Tachibana Higuchi's amazing characters, the songs/poems mentioned. However, Behind Those Walls' plot and mistakes are all mine!
Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who read or/and reviewed! I appreciate it. :) I expect I'll be able to make things clearer soon; these are only introductory chapters, I suppose. Everything will be explained in the long-run, and I can only hope that the thirty minutes thing wasn't too unrealistic. Also, I'm really, really sorry, everyone, for the terrible songwriting in this chapter. Maybe I'll change it in the future, who knows.

Chapter 2: The Song

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso

Ruka was only high enough to have his forehead reach the bottom of the window, so he had to tilt his head upwards, straining to see into it. "I'm back," he said slowly. He looked down at Natsume, who was blankly staring at the wall as he held Ruka steady on his shoulders.

"Oh!" The girl looked up from where she was standing, the cup of water in her hand. "Have you... found a way to get me out?"

Ruka gave a smile, though it was slightly alarmed. There it was again, that odd, unnatural feeling of friendship. And, why was he smiling? He gripped the iron bars tightly, feeling cold. "We haven't yet."

"Really, how are you going to get her out?" Natsume asked, almost teasing. He knew Ruka had no idea.

Ruka sighed. "I'll be right back," he told the girl, and quickly climbed off of Natsume's shoulders.

"Okay," came the reply. "I'll just... play some music then! Maybe it could help you think."

Ruka stepped onto the ground. Natsume took one glance at his upset features and raised an eyebrow.

"It's just," Ruka started. "I felt— I couldn't—" He fell silent.

"The friendly feelings came back?" Natsume asked, his other eyebrow joining the first.

"Yes," Ruka said shortly.

"Well, may—" Natsume closed his mouth so quickly it clacked as the first strains of a song came from inside the small, doorless building. They looked at each other, knowing the tune all too well.

The gentle notes were soft and deceptively sweet, gradually getting louder and rougher. The wordless melody thrummed in the air around them, pulsing with each strum of the guitar. Ruka let out a shaky breath, remembering all of the terrible (and wonderful) things that very song had brought him.

Ruka felt scared, naturally, but he also felt a deep-rooted excitement in hearing it again. "The song... Natsume! The song."

Natsume nodded, his eyes slightly widened in horror. "Yeah." He tilted his head upwards, and cupped his hands. "Hey... Hey, you! Don't sing that—"

"Play, not sing," Ruka said automatically, years of lessons with a strict governess catching up with him. "She's not singing."

Natsume shrugged it off, and said, "You tell her, then." But instead of calling her, to tell her to stop, Ruka started humming along. Natsume widened his eyes. "Ruka."

"I forgot most of the lyrics, it's been the longest time," Ruka stopped humming long enough to say aloud.

Natsume glared sharply at him, his scarlet eyes narrowing. There was absolutely no way Ruka had forgotten the words. It was the first thing everyone in their generation and the generation before had learned as children, before the song had been banned, the same way their grandparents had learned to chant the old rhymes of Tōryanse and Teru-teru-bōzu in their youth.

Ruka looked at Natsume. "But... I know you know the lyrics. Don't you, Natsume?"

"That's idiotic. They'll come and it'll be all over. Tell her to stop playing," Natsume said with a tinge of desparation, feeling more uneasy as the music played on.

Ruka frowned and fixed his gaze on the window. He started to sing along, right in time for the second verse.

"The gold, crimson, and crimson gold,

Dust and dusty, wintry souls,

Growing evermore lion-bold,

Watching the stacked cards unfold."

"The song's almost reaching your favorite part..." Ruka said, even though he didn't quite remember if the next part was indeed Natsume's favorite. "Just say a few lyrics, for old times' sakes." When he saw Natsume at the start of vehemently saying, 'No, are you a fucking moron?' Ruka added, "I never thought you'd follow the rules at a time when we've already broken so many."

They didn't notice the cracks in the wall becoming more defined.

Natsume grimaced slightly. Ruka was right, but he didn't have to rub it all in. Being exiled, being forced to run, losing his home— all for the sake of people he couldn't care less about. It was stupid. Just after thinking that thought, he finally gave in and said some lines completely for the sake of defiance. He could hear a soft voice — the girl's — stumbling over the words, trying to sing along with him and Ruka.

"Press the alstroemeria to your lips,

Forget the hurt, fall in the bliss.

Have a tight hold on each others' hands,

Spin and twirl to the beat of the dance."

Mikan strummed the guitar, listening curiously to the two voices singing along to her melody. Strange... The words matched the notes perfectly, so perfectly it made her want to sing along as well.

What made it sound bad was the voice singing in a monotone. Or... maybe he was just saying it. Mikan wasn't sure. All she knew, deep down, with a conviction which seemed to come from the very roots of her soul, was that she could do it better. She hesitated, then tried to sing along to the unfamiliar words, managing to get at least one line right.

"They sang and turned in a flowery room,

In their blindness, they brought doom."

Mikan sucked in a breath as the bars in her single window bent and snapped, the pieces flying and slamming against the insides of the room. One of them hit her guitar, making her scream. She jumped up and the guitar dropped.

The walls started cracking and chunks fell to the ground. One rather large piece fell on her bed, another near her foot. She dodged the chunks of wall, screaming in terror.

Another stone fell smack onto her guitar, making a painful twang sound that wrenched Mikan's heart. She whipped around in time to see her pastel box crushed into several pieces, her pastels being ground into the stone concrete, almost like a morbid explosion of colors.

The walls collapsed, one by one, and Mikan didn't care anymore. She fell down onto her knees, shaking, and watched a pastel roll past her legs. It rolled in between the ruins, into the dark.

The boys stared at the ruined building with mounting horror. Ruka ran to the ruined building, with Natsume following suit. "Hey? Hello, are you there?" Ruka called frantically.

They heard somebody cry out. The sorrowful wail made Ruka freeze. He glanced at Natsume, who looked uncomfortable as well. They followed the sound, quickly stepping over the rubble.

Sitting behind some broken down bits of a concrete wall, there was a slightly younger girl, staring wide-eyed at something.

Her auburn hair hung loose and silky in front of her face, not the kind of hair a person with her kind of story would have. But no, it wasn't a time to be skeptical. Her hazel eyes were large with disbelief and grief. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she didn't bother to wipe them away.

She covered her mouth with her hands and hiccuped.

"Are you alright?" Ruka asked.

"Obviously not," Natsume muttered.

She tried to say something, raising a finger to point at the thing she was staring at. They followed her gaze, and saw smashed remains of a guitar. Or at least what looked like a guitar. Near it were the remains of a small wooden box. Pastels, too, a rainbow image of broken pieces and smudged concrete.

Natsume picked up a small xylophone. "At least this is—" A key popped off with a terrible noise. The girl gasped and started sobbing. Ruka exchanged a glance with Natsume. Natsume handed the xylophone stiffly to Ruka and narrowed his eyes.

Ruka stared at the girl, who was trying to stop muffle her sobs by pressing her hands on her mouth. She was hiccuping again. He felt pity for her, because she looked as though she had everything she'd ever had destroyed.

Then again, looking at the girl's pristine, white knee-length dress, and glinting jeweled necklace, her claim was getting harder and harder to believe. He shook his head and looked at Natsume. "What now?" he asked.

Natsume glanced at the sky. It was turning a soft pink, with smudges of orange and red, which the girl noticed. She stared at the sky, wide-eyed, still sniffling. Natsume looked at the sun and back at Ruka. "It's almost dusk. We'll go now."

"But what about her?" Ruka asked.

"We can take her—"

"My— My name's..." The girl hiccuped again, wiping her eyes furiously. "Mikan."

Natsume looked her. "Whatever. We'll take the girl to the closest town and drop her off from there. Then we'll go to the place where we're headed," he said easily, careful not to give anything away.

"Right," Ruka said. He held his hand out to help Mikan up. "Let's go."

Mikan took it reluctantly, and stood up. "It's..." She looked around. "It's so odd!" she cried out, looking at the scene around them for the first time. Trying to block out the rubble. Her songs written on walls, most of them gone.

The trees were odd things, with low gnarly branches that seemed to make a fence around the clearing instead of reaching for the sky like she had imagined them. No wonder she had never seen then through her high window.

The sun was setting, giving a gentle, warm glow through the leaves, which made Mikan give a watery smile. Natsume and Ruka started onwards. Mikan took a tentative step— the soft grass made her weakly laugh. It tickled her so strangely. It was like nothing she had ever dreamed of.

In the distance, a bloodhound howled. The boys tore through the trees, and Ruka only looked back once to see if Mikan was following.