a/n – This is it everyone! The end game! I have plans to wrap this up with 24 chapters. I want to let you know about two more stories I have working: a Winter Soldier x female OC that's almost finished (I'm writing the whole thing before release so that you don't have to be so patient, like with this story), and a Horacio Carrillo x female OC (same with writing the whole story, but I just finished chapter 1 of this one yesterday. Though this one will likely be significantly shorter, perhaps 8-10 chapters.)

Thanks again for reading! This isn't beta'd and so there may be some spelling and grammar errors.

Hope you guys are still enjoying, and I'm super appreciative to those who've been here since the beginning! Let's go!

Chapter 22 – Survival

Ter'a came to with a start and gasped. Looking around, she remembered what had happened. Gideon had captured her. Currently, she was alone in a smooth-walled room, with restraints on her wrists and ankles that suspended her almost vertically at about a 20-degree angle backwards. Her arms were away from her body at about a 45-degree angle and her ankles were about a foot and a half apart.

After she registered her surroundings and how she'd gotten there, she remembered Din had been killed. He must have been, she couldn't feel him in the Force. Tears fell, unbidden from her eyes. Despite her best efforts, Din had died. She had been too slow, and Gideon shot him. The last Ter'a saw of Din, he was lying flat on his back in the dirt holding the gunshot wound in his side. She had leapt over him and tackled Gideon and they had rolled over before jumping up and locking lightsabers. She would have had him in lightsaber combat, she was better than him. But the stormtroopers had stunned her. She didn't have the chance to finish Gideon off and go use the Force to heal Din, and now he was dead.

"Come now, girl, don't cry." Gideon smiled as he entered the room.

Ter'a's brain and veins flooded with hatred for Gideon as he entered the room. Her tears were forgotten in an instant.

"I'll kill you."

Gideon smiled and Ter'a screamed as electricity flooded her veins, replacing the hate with agony.

When Ter'a could see again, she was greeted with Gideon's smile. He approached her and said, "Poor girl. I'm sorry I had to kill your friend, but he interfered with my work." He turned, and folding his hands behind his back began pacing lazily around her. "You on the other hand, will spend the rest of your life, however long that is, right here. I've already gotten what I needed from you. Your blood. Just a sample." He stopped in front of Ter'a for a moment to smile before continuing his circuit. "With Din Djarin gone, no one will come for you I think."

With one last look at her, Gideon turned and headed towards the door as Ter'a felt another jolt of electricity surging from her restraints and traveling the course of her body. Before blacking out again, Ter'a had one last thought: Din might be dead, but she wasn't and she wouldn't until she had the chance to avenge him. She had to survive.

Din blinked. He took a deep breath and winced. Well… he wasn't dead, he'd survived… but he felt like shit. With a sigh, Din raised his hand to feel his side. It was heavily bandaged and very sore, but it seemed like it was on the mend… he didn't feel nauseous from pain liked had when he passed out, at least.

Pushing himself to sit up, he winced again, holding his side gingerly as he leaned against the wall behind him.

Looking around, Din saw the destruction of the battle but nothing else. No one else. With a great deal of willpower, Din stood. He had to find Grogu and go find Ter'a, wherever she was. He was just preparing himself to walk when a voice stopped him.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

Leaning back on the table with a sigh, Din turned his head to see Cara walk in with the kid in her arms. Well, there's one of them found, he thought.

"I have to find Ter'a," Din started, surprised at the weakness in his voice. He had been wounded worse than he thought…

"You need to rest and heal," Cara came and pushed his shoulder until he sat back down again.

"I cannot stay here, I have to go find her." If Din had had the energy, he would've been annoyed, but he felt too weak.

"We're already working on it. Greef's sending out feelers to find Gideon. But we can't do anything until 1, we find where he is, and 2, you're well enough to travel."

Din huffed a breath, which was a mistake. Gritting his teeth inside his helmet he held his side. Then he sighed. "What happened?"

Cara came and sat with him, and Grogu climbed into his lap, where Din held him.

"After you were shot? Ter'a saved you from getting killed by that black lightsaber and then they stunned her and took her away. You passed out and I dropped you."

Cara looked a little guilty as she admitted that she dropped his dead weight, but he shrugged it off. In another time and place, it might have been funny, but Din was preoccupied. He had to save Ter'a.

Suddenly, Din felt very warm and tingly around the middle near his wound. He looked down as Cara said, "What the…"

Grogu had his eyes closed in concentration and had his tiny tridactyl hand against his wound. It was from where he touched Din that the warm tingly feeling radiated from. After only a few more seconds, the kid collapsed, unconscious, in Din's hands.

Instinctively, Din leapt up and turned to lay the kid on the table but quickly realized that he was in no pain. After setting the child down, Din reached for his would and felt the bandage, but the pain that had accompanied it a moment ago had gone. Looking up at Cara, who looked confusedly back, Din reached down and pulled up the corner of his tunic. Cara pulled off the bandage and they both gasped when the bandage revealed no wound.

"What… the… hell?" Cara said slowly.

Din looked from the now smooth skin of his side to Grogu. Of course… he remembered how he had healed Greef months before and how that had erased any signs of Karga's injury too.

Din and Cara stared from Din's side to each other wondrously.

Moments later, Greef came jogging in. "I've found her!" He exclaimed before looking at Din, surprised to see him on his feet. Then he saw the child on the table and realization dawned. "Oooh! He did the thing!" He smiled and did a weird motion with is hand in an attempt to mimic Grogu's tridactyl hand movements. Cara nodded, still surprised, as Din laid the child in his pod and they raced out towards the Razor Crest.

When the trio plus Grogu were in the Crest, they took off, Greef punching Gideon's coordinates into the Crest's navicomputer while he explained, "they're only a short distance away, at a medical station."

"How long," Din asked, anxious.

"Six hours tops," was the response.

As Din maneuvered the Crest into the hyperspace lane and the familiar tunnel appeared, the trio sat back and waited.

While the time passed, Din paced, Greef napped, and Cara played with the child, who'd woken up about an hour after they'd left Navarro. After a while, Din stopped and looked up as the navicomputer beeped, signaling their imminent arrival at the Imperial medical station. He walked with all the calm he could muster to the ladder and ascended. When he sat down and pulled the Crest out of hyperspace, a sterile grey space station loomed in the viewport and Din maneuvered the ship to dock, expecting heavy resistance. After a moment, the resistance appeared in the form of several TIE's. Din, who was so singularly focused on Ter'a made quick work of tricking the fighters and firing what small cannons the Crest had that the resistance felt like a laughable blur. When they docked however, Din knew that more difficult resistance awaited them on foot.

As the trio exited the ship, they were indeed met with heavy resistance. This would be an uphill battle, Din knew. With Grogu's closed pod in tow they began to fight and push.

Ter'a woke to the sounds of klaxons wailing, sounding the alarm across the station summoning troopers to station and alert.

Clenching her eyes closed, Ter'a pushed against the pain. She had a massive headache from the electrocution Gideon was submitting her to at unpredictable intervals. Her body ached from the muscle spasms, and her heart hurt from the loss of Din. But Ter'a's spirit was strong in the Force, and so she persevered. Ter'a focused all her energy on the balance of light and dark within her. The Darkness staving off unconsciousness and acquiescence by channeling her pain into power and energy, the Light fighting off the hopelessness that tried to claw its way in. She wouldn't be able to keep this up forever, but at the moment, she still had the energy and will to fight.

Ter'a opened her eyes, the sterile light flooded in, searing her retinas and intensifying the pain in her head. This increased pain only fueled the Dark side, and she channeled it and she reveled in it.

"Well…" Gideon said without pretense as he entered Ter'a's chamber. "It seems that your… friend isn't dead after all."

Ter'a looked up, hoping against hope that Gideon wasn't just toying with her.

Gideon sneered at her. "Don't look too excited, girl. I'll kill that bantha fodder yet." He walked to the console behind her and began entering some commands. Using all of her flexibility, Ter'a strained to look over her shoulder, the movement causing her already sore body to feel like it was on fire. She saw in her peripheral vision that Gideon was monitoring the comms and camera feeds. She smiled when he cursed under his breath. Din was alive, and it appears that he might be succeeding.

Reaching out with the Force, Ter'a felt out for Din. After a moments' painful searching, she found him. Two decks down and getting closer. Attempting to push the pain out of her mind's eye she tried to reach out to him, but the effort was difficult, and her pain flooded back. She could reach him, but she couldn't hide her pain. Additionally, she was only able to hold the connection for a moment. But she knew Din felt her. She smiled, then winced.

Din slid to a stop and leaned against the wall. He felt both agony and relief all at once.

"What happened?!" Cara grabbed his shoulder.

"I felt… her. She reached out to me… through the Force?" Din was guessing but that's what it seemed like.

"She's in a lot of pain," he said, closing his eyes and thinking about where to go from here. They'd already met and killed what felt like thousands of Imps, but based on her contact with him through the Force, she was hurting badly and desperate for help. When Greef accessed the comm terminal just inside the docking bay, he'd made quick work of finding Ter'a. But they still had to get to her. Three decks later, they still had two to go and they had to hurry. Din felt that if pressed into a rock and a hard place, Gideon would kill Ter'a. He urged Cara and Greef onwards.

"You know," Gideon hissed as he paced in front of Ter'a holding a small switch device that manually controlled Ter'a's electric constraint device. When he picked it up, he had switched it on to it's lowest setting, feeding Ter'a a constant stream of low level electricity, not quite ready to kill her. She clenched her teeth as her body rippled with current and she felt pain in every corner of her body. Gideon was desperate. This was the end. Either Din would burst in and save her, or Gideon would kill her and then Din would kill him. She was in too much pain to reach out to the Force to find out.

"If you had just cooperated," Gideon continued, "then perhaps you wouldn't be in this situation."

"All you had to do," he hissed, "was cooperate."

Ter'a tried to talk. She wanted to tell Gideon to go to hell, or Dathomir, or Mustafar, or wherever, but the current caused muscle spasms she couldn't talk through. Gideon laughed. "I think," he smiled menacingly, "that this is the end for you, girl."

Gideon stepped up close to Ter'a and held up the device controller and made a show about turning up the power. Ter'a's back arched outward as he turned up the dial. She knew nothing, could feel nothing but vibrating, agonizing, mind-numbing agony. It felt like it went on for hours, though if it had, certainly she'd be dead. And suddenly, Ter'a knew she had died. Everything stopped. The pain stopped, the sound stopped. Even Gideon's mocking laughter stopped. Ter'a looked up. She saw a line of figures. They all smiled at her. Her old master. Jedi she knew as a child. Master Plo Koon. Master Kenobi. Friends from the Temple. And many others besides. Her master approached her and took her hand, helping her to her feet. She stood and he smiled down at her. She looked back at him, ready to join him and the others in the Force. But he said, "You have done well, Ter'a. I'm so proud of you."

But when Ter'a took a step towards the others, he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She looked at him, confused.

He smiled wider still and said, "Your time in the galaxy is not yet ended Ter'a. Return. Live. Love."

Ter'a looked up at him again, but he'd gone. Instead Ter'a felt her eyes burn against the sterile whiteness of the ceiling in the interrogation chamber. Pain flooded back to her, but she was no longer being electrocuted. The dark-skinned man from Navarro held the device control in his gloved hands and had switched it off. She heard the woman from Navarro behind her trying to find the constraint release controls. And Ter'a looked beyond the man in front of her to see a tall, beskar-clad figure stooping over Moff Gideon's lifeless body. When Din straightened up, he was tucking something into his belt.

Ter'a watched bleary-eyed as the Mandalorian made his way to her and after a brief nod from the other man assuring him the electricity was off, Din stepped closed to her and took her face in his own gloved hands.

"Are you alright?" he whispered in a shaky voice.

In truth, Din was overcome with emotion as he held Ter'a's face in his hands. She looked terrible. Her body trembled with after-shock spasms from the electricity and she looked absolutely drained. But she was a fighter, and here she was, alive, exhausted, and hurt. But alive.

"Are you alright?" he repeated.

Too shaky and tired to speak, Ter'a just smiled weakly.

Looking past Ter'a, Din saw Cara nod at him and say "Hold her. I'm going to release the restraints."

Din stepped up closer to Ter'a and wrapped his arms around her so that when the restraints gave way, Ter'a's body collapsed into his arms. Her body draped over his shoulder, and she made no attempt to hold onto him, her body was just too tired.

When Din had a good hold on her, he turned and said, "Let's go," and they all left the room to fight the imperial remnants on the way back to the ship.