Everything was right, but everything was wrong.

Talia stood in the middle of the downtown Manhattan streets, a place very much familiar to her. The roads, sidewalks, buildings, food carts, people - everything was how she remembered it. It was almost like entering a memory of the days when she was happiest. The days she was working toward completing her life's work. Almost.

But here, now? Something was different.

She had been resisting spending too much time outside in the city due to fear of being recognized, or worse, triggering a transformation and unleashing her inner monster upon the metropolis. But now she was standing here,outside, alone and vulnerable. And she couldn't remember why or how.

Suddenly, Talia realized that she was not standing on the sidewalk but instead in the street, right in the middle of traffic. She expected panic, but none came. Quite oddly, there was no honking, no usual threat of impatient drivers trying to run her over. Instead, cars were driving silently around her, like she existed but didn't exist.

Confused, she hustled over to the safety of the sidewalk, and inserted herself among the crowded walkway. As per usual, waves of people were moving past her in both directions, traveling together like a current in a river. But these people also felt off. Emotionless husks, drifting around and by her, again like she existed but didn't exist all the same. Confused and creeped out, Talia tried to look at their faces, tried to make eye contact. However, all were blank, nonexistent.

Except one.

One other figure stood still amid the freeflow of faceless people. People were moving around this figure as well, like water moving around a stone in a stream. Intrigued, Talia began to move toward the person. It looked to her like a woman, with familiar brown hair, olive-colored skin, and an unassuming posture. This woman, like her, had a face: Talia Walker's face.

Instead of being freaked out, Talia moved cautiously toward her doppelganger with traditional curiosity, noticing that as she moved, everything around her cleared a path allowing her to walk unimpeded. The other Talia stood still, dreadfully still, wearing only a smile which stood in stark contrast with the eyes that were tracking her every move. Red eyes, as if they were hate incarnate.

The scientist approached her Other and stood almost nose to nose with the red-eyed her. It was as if she was looking into the mirror, except without any glass to protect her from her reflection.. Same face, same hair, same clothes, same shallow breaths, same stoic expression burying bottled up emotion.

"Who are you?" Talia asked, her eyes narrowed as she continued studying her mirror image.

The doppelganger smirked. "We've been over this, Tal."

Rachel's nickname, though Talia. The impostor's use of it immediately spurred anger to build up inside of her. "My name is Talia," she spat. "Only my friends call me 'Tal.'"

"And I'm not a friend?" The doppelganger motioned to its body. "I'm you, after all. Do you not like yourself?"

Talia frowned. "You're not me."

The doppelganger shook its head. "Always in denial. Still, after all this time?" It began to walk around Talia in a circle, red eyes scanning every inch of her. Talia felt increasingly uneasy under their gaze. While it looked the same as her, there was something different about this impostor, this Talia-creature. Talia carefully took a step backward.

"Come, Tal," said the Talia-creature. "Why the hostility? It's not like you can actually escape me." The Other placed a cold hand on Talia's shoulder. "We're all in this together."

"No," said Talia forcefully, smacking away the icy gesture. "I'm in this by myself." She turned and began to walk away. However, within a few steps, she abruptly came face to face with the Talia-creature, as if it had teleported.

Talia jerked herself backward in fright. The doppelganger, however, folded its arms across its chest and laughed. A laugh that pierced Talia's calm.

"You're scared. Scared of this. Scared of what lies in wait inside you. Scared of what will come out when you let your never-ending guard down."

"I, no, I…" Talia stumbled. Flustered, she shook her head dismissively and once more tried to turn away. But, again, her doppelganger had appeared to block her path. She also noticed that all the drone-like people, all the cars, all the noise had vanished. They were the only two on a now eerily empty city block.

"You're so predictable," said the Talia-creature. "You say you want control, that you want to be yourself again, but you can't even face me. You're so...weak."

Talia felt a stir of anger well up inside of her. "You don't know anything about me!"

The Talia-creature shook her head. "I know too much about you, unfortunately. You and I, we're linked. We're bonded. We're the same, deep down."

"We are NOT the same," growled the doctor.

"Now, now, don't get angry. We all know what happens when you do that." The doppelganger uncrossed its arms and placed its hands forcefully on Talia's shoulders. Still ice cold. "Look at us. You can ignore me if you wish, but I figured you were at least smart enough to know that denying my existence won't solve anything."

The doctor shoved the Talia-creature away. "I don't deny you, I just don't accept you."

The doppelganger tilted its head. "Do you even know who I am? Do you really think it's that simple?" The red eyes glared at her, still resounding with hate. They reminded Talia of her inner beast, but these were...different. Uncomfortably different from the green eyes of her monster.

Talia did her best to focus, and project confidence. "I'm smart enough to know that one day I'll be rid of you. In fact, I'm working on something right now."

"Rid of me? Rid of me?" The Talia-creature flung its head back and laughed, red eyes glowing bright. The laugh cut through Talia like a sharpened knife, and she stumbled back in fear as a large shadow began to spread from her doppelganger and drape across her. Quickly, her other's body began to change, with the familiar sounds of tearing fabric, cracking bones, and stretching sinew echoing traumatically into Talia's ears. Unlike her own unwelcome transformation, however, there was no struggle, no resistance as this monster emerged in front of her, cloaked in darkness. No matter how hard she tried to look, however, the monster was obscured in pure, black shadow, with only its bright red eyes visible to her.

"Oh, you are naive." The shadow creature leaned forward and those eyes, the color of blood, burned into hers. "You can find a cure, Talia, but you'll never be rid of me."

Talia shot up from the bed, gulping in the stale air of Geoff's apartment as droplets of sweat rolled down her forehead. Instinctively, her hands shot up to her face and she began to feel every angle, every corner. Panic. Confusion. Her heart was racing. Quickly, she urged herself to calm her breathing. I can't change, not here, not now! she thought.

She took a moment to acclimate to her surroundings. She was in the city, yes, but inside the security of these walls, not in the middle of the street like in her dream. And instead of her doppelganger, only the strangely comforting sounds of Rachel snoring from the couch in the other room filled her ears.

Soon, her heartbeat slowed and reality settled in. It was just a nightmare, and she was still human.

Still, the air felt heavy, stifling. The apartment was strangely constricting. I need a breath of fresh air, Talia thought, and I need it now.

Her eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, Talia crept out of the guest bedroom and tried to sneak her way through the living room with minimal noise, hoping not to wake Rachel on the couch as she made her way to the front door. Once there, she carefully cracked it open and slid her small body through the gap, escaping into the hallway.

The warm fluorescent lights that glowed in the building's burned into her sensitive eyes. She lifted a hand to shield her vision for a few moments until her eyes could adjust. As her surroundings came into focus, she recognized the walls that needed a fresh coat of paint and the carpet that had probably been in style more than two decades ago. Geoff's door became one of many identical entrances that lined either side of the hall. Her brain, however, had memorized the layout from when they had first arrived at his building, and Talia used this mental map to navigate toward the one door that stood out from the others — the one marked with STAIRSin bold type.

She pushed the door open and was instantly faced with a choice: Down would lead her to an exit, but to the city streets, where she had no interest in going so soon after her nightmare experience. So she went up. Geoff's apartment was toward the top of his building, so it didn't take long before she had reached her goal: the rooftop.

The door had already been cracked open, the heavy door held ajar by a small slab of concrete wedged into the frame. Talia leaned her body weight into the door and pushed it open. Brisk, but fresh air hit her; she gulped in several lungfuls of it, and her body instantly went to ease, letting the city night wrap itself around her.

The calm was short-lived, she found, as her heart jumped once more when she saw a figure standing a short distance away, leaning on a haphazard railing. She thought to flee, but the person had already turned, noticing her presence.

"Can't sleep, huh?" asked the man, glancing over his shoulder. He was holding a drinking glass, filled three-quarters of the way with an amber-colored liquid, some of which had spilled as he turned to see who it was.

Talia struggled to readjust her vision once more, from the warm interior lights to the light-polluted air of the rooftop. "How am I not surprised," asked the man.

Talia squinted toward the figure, his shape slowly forging into something familiar. Should've brought your damn glasses with you, Talia.

She made an educated guess, as she was used to doing most of her life: "Geoff?"

"Don't worry," her former colleague said, lifting the beverage to his lips. "I couldn't sleep either."

Talia felt herself ease again. She walked carefully toward Geoff and the rooftop railing, allowing her senses to adjust to its surroundings once again. "I never could sleep the day before a big experiment."

Geoff nodded, a sly grin appearing on his face. "Oh yeah, I remember." He used his free hand to tap on his forehead. "You were always running variables in your head up until the second we'd actually start in the lab. Then the second it ended, you were back in your own mind crunching those numbers."

He took another swig of his drink. "Is that what you're doing up here now?"

"Of course," she lied.

"Hell, do you ever get a full night's sleep, Talia?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Define full."

Geoff snickered, and Talia's attempt to keep a straight face only lasted a few seconds before she broke into a chuckle, with Geoff joining in with a hearty laugh. "Well, if you're up here, you may as well join me for a good luck drink." He handed Talia his glass, still mostly full of the mystery liquor. She shook her head.

"I insist, as your host," he said. Talia waved it off again, but Geoff just continued to hold it out. "It'll help you sleep."

She sighed. "Losing my inhibitions isn't really a good idea for me, Geoff."

He rolled his eyes dismissively. "Oh, you really haven't changed, Talia." He looked toward her, and before she could open her mouth, Geoff preemptively furrowed his brow. "And don't go telling me you're different now because of this She-Hulk or whatnot. You're still Talia Walker."

Talia sighed. "Well, I don't feel like her."

Geoff seemed intrigued. "Well then, who do you feel like?"

She was caught off guard by the question. She opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out, so she closed her lips and stood in thought.

"Well, um…" Talia hesitated. "Like...somebody else."

Geoff shook his head. "No, no, no, too vague." He indulged himself with another sip of his beverage. "That may work on your blonde friend, but I'm afraid that doesn't cut it on this rooftop tonight, among us scientists."

Now it was Talia who furrowed her brow. "OK, fine, I'll answer that if you answer me this first." She focused her glare at him. "Why don't you like Rachel?"

He flinched at the question, clearly not expecting it. "I don't know what you're talking about," he answered quickly.

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head. "You started this game and I'm not going to let you slither out of it. I see the way you act when she's around. You barely give her the time of day, and when you do, it's dismissive or outright cold. The last time I saw you act like this was when you clearly didn't like the person."

Geoff laughed defensively. "And when was that?"

Talia smirked. "When you did the same thing to me."

There was a pause. "I like you a lot, Talia, always have. Come on."

"You do now, but not when I first joined your team. I clearly was not your first choice. And you did not keep that a secret. I'm pretty sure you referred to me as that 'mousy know-it-all,' at least to your colleagues."

Geoff looked at her blankly. Talia didn't budge.

"Trust me, being a woman in this male-dominated field got me used to judgments and rejections, and plenty of worse nicknames. I've always had to work twice as hard to achieve things, but I used my…" she couldn't help but pause to laugh.

"I used my anger to force myself to prove I belonged."

"Damn, I always underestimate you, Talia." Geoff's eyes avoided contact with her gaze; Talia knew she had pierced his confident facade. "I did back then, too, but I'm glad I got some sense knocked into me."

Geoff basked in his thoughts for a moment. "You're right, I didn't like you at first, even after I hired you. You were some young hotshot out of New England who marched into New York thinking they had all of the answers, even though the rest of us had been trying for what felt like ages.

"But that's the thing," he said, his eyes now finding hers, "you did have the answers. You progressed our research light years ahead of where it had been. We were on the cusp of something great, and then…"

Talia knew where this was going. "My illness."

"You were dealt a bad hand. I still can't imagine what you were going through, knowing this had been a possibility since you were young, since your father died." He went to take another sip of his drink but suddenly stopped, as if he decided against it. "And we could've figured it out together! We had the research, we had the brainpower, the money. But instead she convinced you to go back to Vermont to die."

Geoff slumped onto the roof railing, as if that admission had taken a toll on him.

"How many times are we going to have this argument, Geoff?" Talia felt her emotions jumping in front of her logic. "Rachel didn't convince me to do anything," she said pointedly, her eyes narrowing on him. She took a deep breath, reeling herself back in. "My time was running out, and I had accepted I was going to die. I...I couldn't be here anymore." She sighed. "I needed to make peace with my origins, with the pain that resided in Vermont, and Rachel offered me a way to do that.

"In fact," she added in a pained voice, "Rachel shared your argument, that I couldn't give up and let the disease take me. She was the one who set up the interview at the university that ended with me taking the local job. She was the one who encouraged me to not accept certain death, to do the experiment on myself, which led to my…condition, which you yourself are enamored with. It was my decision and not at all her fault, but it's part of the reason she feels partially responsible for where I am. So can you please quit your sulking over her?"

Silence. Geoff stewed in it, swirling his drink for a moment and Talia swayed in the city air uncomfortably waiting for a reaction.

"I'll be sure Rachel gets all the accolades she's deserving of," he finally answered, his voice heavy with annoyance. He sighed, before turning and looking her straight in the eye with a seriousness she rarely saw him project.

"And I'll let you know, Talia, that I'm not sulking up here drinking because of your friend or because we'll never agree on whether or not you should've left New York in the first place. I'm sulking because...well," he stumbled. "...The fact is that you wanted to die before, and I'm not convinced you don't want to die again now."

She felt her eyebrows shoot up in confusion. "What?"

Geoff didn't blink. "I've been running the numbers, the data. Scanning your genetics, trying to get to the bottom of your metamorphosis - all of which is why you came for my help." He began to draw invisible figures in the air with his fingers. "The She-Hulk, the gamma radiation circulating inside you - every transformation is a rejuvenation of your system almost like back to square one for you. As in the video you showed me, it erases any visiblesign of your disease."

Talia felt a chill worse than the city air. "Visible sign?"

He nodded. "I've compared your nanobot scans from weeks ago and the ones we've been taking recently. The ones from a few weeks ago, where you said you had experienced multiple metamorphoses over the course of several days, your genetics were pristine. Healthiest scan of yours I've ever seen in our time together."

A swig of his drink fueled him further. "Well these recent scans are after a couple of weeks without a transformation. Your data is still great, don't get me wrong, but after going over them several times I've noticed a few early markers of your disease apparent in these recent scans. Nothing serious that would affect you, but these are the same flawed genetics that you would've inherited from your father, who was a carrier of the same disease."

She stared grimly. "Are you saying I'm not cured of my disease?"

"I can't say for certain, the data is very preliminary and I'd need to do more comparisons and tests and…"

"Geoff."

He sighed. "What the data looks like to me is that if you went too long without a transformation into the creature, there would be no reset to your cells and genetics. Meaning that your disease would eventually take its course again given enough time - at least until another metamorphosis would revert you back to a pre-symptom state." He stared at Talia, his eyes wearing pain. "But if we succeeded in ridding you of the She-Hulk, as you want, and you never transformed again, then…"

Geoff downed the rest of his drink. Talia didn't need him to finish the sentence for her to know what he meant. They basked in each other's silence for several minutes, allowing the nighttime noise of Manhattan to speak for them in the backdrop.

"You were always smarter than me, Talia. Hell, you're the smartest damn person I've ever met." Geoff looked out into the concrete jungle, as if it held the answer he was searching for.

"If any of us can figure all of this out, it'll be you." He forced a smirk "With some help from me, of course."

Talia leaned over toward Geoff, reached out, and grabbed the empty glass out of his hand. Leaning over with an awkward grace, the scientist scooped up the bottle of spirit and poured herself a healthy dose. With a toast to the air, she knocked back and let the liquor burn down her throat and into her system, where she sat with that feeling for another few minutes. She looked down upon the drab cement floor of the rooftop, where the city lights were casting dark, abstract shapes.

"My shadow."

Geoff looked up in confusion. "Talia?"

"You asked me before who I felt like if I didn't feel like myself." She looked down at the dark shape projecting from her feet. It was her shape, but warped. It matched her every move like it was her, just with the absence of light. She hated it.

"I feel like my shadow."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi everybody. Apologies for it being so long since my last update. Been a crazy year for me, and I'm sure it has been for many of you as well. I have the next chapter just about done after this, so hope to get back on a more normal schedule for these updates. For all of you hoping to get a dose of She-Hulk after such a long drought, I promise you won't be disappointed in the next few updates. Thanks again for all of you who have been following and commenting and waiting so patiently! I'm in your debt. -CrimsonResistance