It is nearing Christmas, my sweeties! And that means I have a long vacation. And that, in turn, means more chapters! Hurrah!

Speaking of the holiday season, I'm working on a Christmas-themed chapter that ought to satiate your appetite for holiday cheer and your thirst for John whump; so you can look forward to that.

Aaaaanyway... here is another chapter for everyone! It has been a while, so my writing skills might have rusted a bit. But oh well.

Thanks to CC for the prompt.

Lestrade drove his squad car, lights and sirens blaring as he sped down the country road, two other cars following suit.

"Sherlock, you're sure about this?" he asked the detective in the back seat.

"Now isn't the time to question my reliability, Lestrade. I've proven myself trustworthy before; why would the case be different now?"

"But these are kids' lives on the line..."

"Yes, and my want to rescue the both of them is just as great as yours. Now shut up and drive."

John, who happened to be seated in the passenger's seat, sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose, overwhelmed by every aspect of the situation.

"Jesus, this is insane," he breathed.

"It's moronic is what it is," Sherlock scoffed.

"'Moronic'?" Lestrade repeated. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Successfully earning ransom money via kidnapping is nearly impossible after leaving so much incriminating evidence behind. And these two men have certainly left more than enough evidence for me to work with; it's insulting to my intellect. "

"Seriously?" Lestrade exclaimed. "That's all you're worried about?"

"Greg," John stopped the inspector, "Don't. It's fine."

Lestrade shot John a doubtful look, but merely sighed.

"Okay."

And he kept on driving. Suddenly, Sherlock spoke out, startling him.

"Pull over."

"Christ," the inspector muttered as he jerked the steering wheel over to the side of the road, bringing the car to a stop, thanking the stars that they were located in the rural countryside. "We aren't even there yet!"

"No, but they'll be alarmed if we park directly in front of the house." Sherlock began to open the door. "We walk from here."

Now even John was beginning to question his flatmate. "Hold on; we're about a twenty minute's walk away," he argued.

Sherlock shrugged his shoulders.

"Problem?"

Lestrade and John exchanged a weary look and reluctantly climbed out of the car. As they and Sherlock shut the doors, all three immediately began to walk down the long stretch of road. Lestrade looked over his shoulders at the two other squad cars stopped behind his own. Donovan had stepped out and into the road, placing her hands on her hips, completely confused and irritated.

"Just wait!" Greg shouted at her.

The exasperated lieutenant threw her hands up in the air before bending down to talk to her comrades.

"I pray you both are armed," Sherlock said, walking ahead of his companions.

"Yep," the two of them answered simultaneously.

"Very good. John, you'll lead us in, due to the fact that you're a better shot."

"Right," the doctor nodded.

"I'll follow behind him. Lestrade; you'll serve as the rear."

The inspector seemed to resent this decision.

"Fine," he sighed.

"Christ, these poor kids are probably scared to death," John said.

Sherlock scoffed.

"Obviously. They've been held hostage for four days."

"Leave it to you to make conversation impossible," Lestrade grumbled.

The detective remained silent.

The long walk seemed to pass by rather quickly, for the three men had arrived at the abandoned house before they even knew it.

Sherlock stopped in his tracks, motioning to his flatmate to come forward, the doctor gladly obliging.

"Be careful," Lestrade said from behind.

Sherlock promptly shushed him.

In a line, the three of them approached the front porch of the rickety shack, the stairs creaking beneath them as they ascended. Cautiously, John tried the door handle, pleased when he found that it easily gave way, allowing him to open the door and give him and his comrades access to the inside. The hinges were incredibly rusty, and they crunched and creaked as the doctor pushed the door they were holding open, causing the man to flinch.

Slowly, he, Sherlock, and Lestrade advanced further into the house, the floorboards even creakier than the stairs.

"Cellar," Sherlock suddenly whispered.

"What?" John asked.

"The door in the stairs," he motioned to the unstable staircase. "They should lead to a cellar."

John nodded and continued forward, placing a wary hand on the gun in his pants. When he approached the cellar door, he found himself rather irritated when the handle didn't budge it open.

"Dammit," he swore.

Suddenly, there came the cries of a little boy.

"Let us go, please!"

He sounded young, but not too much so. Well, obviously he was nine (making him the elder), given the expository information on him and his brother Sherlock and John had received.

"Thomas?" Lestrade yelled. "It's alright! Help is here!"

"Shut up!" Sherlock hissed.

"Sherlock, the lock's been busted," John said.

The detective tensed.

"They anticipated our arrival then."

"What?"

Sherlock took a moment to think, looking around him. His eyes fell upon a trail of his and his companions' shoe prints, left behind due to some sort of wet substance.

He quickly yanked his left shoe off and examined the bottom.

"Petrol..." he whispered.

His mind was attacked with the reality of the situation.

"It's a trap!" he exclaimed.

As if on cue, the area around the three men went up in flames.

"Christ!" Lestrade yelled.

The two boys downstairs began wailing.

"Step aside!" John commanded, his suddenly gruff voice shocking his friends into submission.

The heat of the fire beat mercilessly at the doctor's back as he braces himself, and he could already feel the smoke infiltrating his lungs.

He threw himself against the door once, pain erupting throughout his shoulder as it easily gave way under his weight. He managed to stop himself from hurdling down the stairs and descended to the cellar, quickly followed by Sherlock and Lestrade who were both coughing.

"I'll get them untied!" John yelled as he hacked. He could barely hear himself over the roar of the fire upstairs.

He rushed over to the crying children.

"You're alright boys," he assured them. "You're going to be alright."

The bonds around the children's wrists came undone as soon as John had worked through the knots.

Quickly, John took their hands and pushed them towards Sherlock and Lestrade, who were both covering their noses and mouths with their sleeves.

"Get them out of here!" he yelled.

Sherlock gathered one of the young boys in his arms while Lestrade took the other one by the hand.

"Come on, John!" Sherlock yelled.

The doctor shielded his own face as he followed Lestrade and Sherlock up the stairs. Now burdened with two frightened children, the three of them waded through the burning house, minding smouldering pieces of wood that had fallen from the ceiling and, probably most dangerous, the merciless flames eating away at the walls and roof.

Jesus, these bastards had been thorough.

They almost reached the front door, which, itself, was blocked by a line of fire, when John heard a threatening crack above him from one of the already unstable rafters. He looked up, noticing with horror that the beam was right above Sherlock and Lestrade's heads. He wasted no time in shoving his friends forward through the flaming door with his own body as the wood came crashing down.

Sherlock was busy shielding the small child in his arms with his Belstaff, feeling an odd sense of urgency to get this child to safety; almost like a fatherly instinct. He squinted through the brightness and the smoke surrounding him, his nostrils and lungs filling up with ash and embers; not exactly safe. Lestrade was ahead of him, now also holding the elder boy, trying to manoeuvre his way through the threatening flames. He could sense John behind him, urging him to move forward with that telepathic link people always claimed the two of them seemed to have (which, at this point, Sherlock was willing to accept as fact). So selfless was his flatmate, always throwing himself in the line of fire (this time quite literally) to help those in need. But damn, did John get authoritative when he switched into selfless mode. Sherlock would normally be annoyed by such behaviour, but for some reason in John's case, he didn't seem to mind. Of course, it usually frightened him a bit to see such a generally friendly man turn cold, even for the briefest period of time.

Sherlock coughed again, earning a concerned glance from Lestrade who was also practically hacking up a lung. They were nearly to the front door.

Without much warning, the detective felt rough hands and soon, a body, push him forward (not too gently) into Lestrade, and they both stumbled through the flames blocking the door and out onto the porch, a crash sounding behind them. Without another thought, they clambered down the stairs, seeing that Donovan had parked the squad cars in front of the house, and hearing more sirens from a distance. The fire brigade had been called, then, probably along with an ambulance or two.

Now out of the fire, Sherlock ran across the lawn to the cars, placing the young boy into Donovan's arms.

"He's fine," he rasped through another coughing fit. "He'll... he'll be fine."

Lestrade came by and placed the other boy down, wrapping the young lad in his coat to calm him down. He coughed some more as well.

"Jesus Christ, what a wreck," he said. "Thanks for noticing the trap. A bit too late, though."

"I'm a detective, not a psychic!" Sherlock argued. "John, explain."

There was no immediate response.

His heart skipping a beat, Sherlock turned around to see the burning house again.

And John wasn't there to block his view.

"John!" he shouted with sore vocal chords.

He ran back towards the house, ignoring the cries from Lestrade and Donovan to stop. He hardly winced as he passed through the flame-engulfed doorway once more. Sure enough, his companion had been unintentionally left behind, but in the worst way possible: trapped beneath a beam. The detective got down on his knees and crawled towards his friend, ignoring the burn in his chest.

"John!" he croaked.

The doctor was weakly struggling beneath the heavy piece of wood pinning down his lower body.

"Hey," he rasped. "I'm a bit stuck."

"You idiot," Sherlock growled, moving around to grab the end of the beam.

"Think m'leg's broken," John remarked.

The detective ignored him and tried lifting the beam, falling back uncomfortably close to a patch of fire.

"Stop," John said. "S'not gonna work." The man was clearly dizzy from smoke inhalation. "Two man job."

Sherlock put a hand on his flatmate's shoulder.

"Don't move."

Before John could protest or even quip regarding the impossibility of him moving anywhere, his friend had run out the door again.

"Bloody coat's on fire," he mumbled.

The git couldn't ever care for his own bloody self.

Sherlock soon returned with Leatrade, the both of them wincing away from the flames.

"Christ, John!" the inspector exclaimed.

He and Sherlock didn't hesitate to get on opposite ends of the beam. With a consensual nod, they lifted it up at the same time, shuffling it away from John, trying to tune out the man's means of pain, and setting it down with a grunt.

"Come on, John," Sherlock coughed.

He slid his friend's arm around his shoulders and lifted him up, shocked by the dead weight.

"John!"

The man was practically unconscious.

"Dammit," Sherlock grumbled.

"Let me help!" Lestrade said.

"Back off. I've got him," Sherlock insisted, adjusting John into a fireman's carry.

Rolling his eyes, Lestrade let Sherlock go through the door, following behind him. He was perfectly happy to leave Hell.

Sherlock ran down the porch steps back out onto the lawn. He waited until he had approached a safe distance and let John down on the grass, flipping him over onto his back.

The doctor coughed for what seemed like ages, his throat catching on ash and smoke.

"Ow," he groaned.

"Are you quite finished being the hero, now?" Sherlock hissed.

"Mmm," John hummed, his eyes drooping.

A fire engine had come bearing men and hoses (as one would usually anticipate), and the workers were quickly moving to put out the relentless flames engulfing the house.

Meanwhile, a paramedic had come over with an oxygen mask and was trying to put it on John.

"Let me," Sherlock commanded her. "Focus on his leg."

The woman nodded and allowed Sherlock to tend to his friend's breathing while she tended to the doctor's leg.

John tried batting away Sherlock's hands as the detective lifted his torso up and tried fixating the mask on him.

"John, stop it," the man said, coughing a bit. "Just let me help you."

With an irritated and tired sigh, John complied, letting his hands fall limply down as the breathing mask was placed over his nose and mouth.

"Breathe, John," Sherlock told him.

Keeping one hand on the mask, the detective used his other one to inspect John's hands, suspecting burns. Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed by the presence of some painful-looking blisters and patches of sizzling flesh, most likely a product of John's falling face forward when the beam pinned him down; the man's palms must have come in contact with the flames. The beam, if Sherlock's memory served him well, had also been on fire. So when John was struggling to free himself, he, more likely than not, stupidly burned himself.

Lestrade came bounding over to the pair of men, his features exhausted and his face made sheen by sweat. He knelt beside them.

"Are you alright?" he asked, placing a protective hand on Sherlock and John's shoulders.

"Fine," Sherlock said. "And you?"

Lestrade wheezed.

"Seen better days. But I'll be fine."

"Sir, you might want to get you and your friend looked at," the female paramedic working on John's leg interjected.

"We will," Lestrade assured her.

He paused as he looked down at a bit of grass that had caught on fire next to Sherlock's coat which was also on fire.

"I'll just..." he stomped the flames out. "There."

Sherlock's eyes were fixated on John who was breathing ruggedly and obviously paying no mind to the pain his leg was probably causing him.

"He'll be alright," Lestrade told the detective.

"I know that."

"Why don't you let the paramedics take a look at you?"

"Are the children alright?"

Lestrade nodded.

"For the most part. Scared, definitely, but safe."

Sherlock paused.

"I'm... I'm sorry."

"For what, Sherlock?"

"For not anticipating this... unfortunate turn of events."

"Unfortunate is right," Lestrade puffed. "But there was no way you could have known about this. I was only joking before."

"I should have known. These men are-"

"In custody," Lestrade interrupted. "Donovan caught them as they were making a run for it down the road. They weren't expecting us to have reinforcements." He furrowed his brow. "Bastards doused the place and hid until we walked right into their trap. Then they threw a bloody match through the door.

"The problem has been handled accordingly. That's all that matters," Sherlock sighed.

He kept his hand on John's mask to hold it in place, feeling the doctor's warm breath through it.

Lestrade stood up.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?"

Sherlock nodded.

"Alright," the inspector said. "But I want you to get yourself looked at after John."

"Fine."

"'Fine' as in you're going to? Or 'fine' as in you want me to stop bothering you?"

"I'll leave that to your imagination."

Lestrade rolled his eyes and walked away to talk to Donovan.

Sherlock noticed a disapproving look on John's face.

"What is it?" he asked.

The doctor weakly pulled the mask from his face to speak.

"You left your shoe," he whispered.

Sherlock looked behind him to see his left foot looking a bit bare.

"Oh. So I did."

John chuckled.

"Idiot."

The detective holding him gave him a tiny smile.

The paramedic fixing John's leg finished securing it with a brace and looked up at Sherlock.

"We ought to move him now," she said. "To get him to the hospital."

Sherlock placed his hand on top of John's to put the mask back in place.

"Fine," he consented.