Chapter Two
The Body in the Marsh
They swapped the champagne for coffee and their tipsy affection for serious concentration. Pepper cradled her mug to her chest, the evening's romance whipped ruthlessly away. She was sitting on the sofa on the lounge next to Tony. The Vision remained seated on his chaise-long, his newspaper folded up on his chest. A headline shaming a C-list celebrity's weight gain yelled up from the front cover but The Vision seemed uninterested, fixing both Tony and Pepper with his unnerving electric-blue stare. Steve had precariously perched his huge body on a small pouf Pepper kept near the hearth. There was plenty of room on the sofa next to her, but Pepper had observed that Steve had a slight complex about personal space. Particularly with regards to women. It would have almost been funny watching him balance there awkwardly, had it not been for the extremely sombre expression haunting his face.
"I got a phone call a couple of days ago," Steve began. "From a guy I used to know. He worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. – he was based in England. After S.H.I.E.L.D. well, dissolved…" This was like Steve, Pepper thought. He was even trying to be tactful about the complete decimation of the organisation that tried to have him killed. "He began to work for MI5. He's a nice guy. Richard Bullmore."
With a blur of his thumbs on the keypad of his phone, Tony had Googled him. "Draws a complete blank," Tony said, puzzled, scrolling down the screen.
"He works for MI5, Tony," Steve said. "You're not going to find anything on the internet. I don't even know if his real name is Richard Bullmore. That's what he called himself when I knew him. I worked with him a few times. Incredibly skilled agent. Seemed like a good guy."
"So what did he say?" Pepper asked. She could feel the anxiety building in her chest. Nice though Steve was, she wished he'd just tell them what was going on – rip off the anticipation like a band-aid.
Steve turned to her. He took a deep breath – never a good sign. "He had something he wanted to show me," he said. "But he said it was too classified to email or send over the internet. I flew out to London on Wednesday. Just got back."
"You came straight from the airport?" Pepper exclaimed. "From London?"
"Yes."
"As in London, England?"
"Yes."
"Steve – when was the last time you slept?" she asked.
"Tuesday, but it doesn't-"
"Are you hungry? We could have brought you something back from the restaurant if we'd known-"
"No really – it's fine."
"What was so important…" Tony interjected. "That meant you had to go a whole forty-six hours without sleep." His tone was flat, deliberately emotionless.
Steve looked at him for a moment without talking. It was a strange expression, almost as though he couldn't believe that Tony was sitting in front of him. As if he couldn't believe that Tony was real.
"Richard received reports from an archaeological dig, happening somewhere in Norfolk," Steve said. "They found something interesting."
"Just show them." The Vision had folded up his newspaper and was now staring at Steve. "It's the only way."
Steve nodded at the carpet. "Ok," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "It's a picture file," he said to Tony. "Is there some way you can make it bigger?"
Wordlessly, Tony accepted Steve's phone and held the screen against the face of his watch for a few seconds. He flicked his finger at the floor-to-ceiling window, now pitch black with the night sky. Immediately, the window lit up with an image.
It took a while for Pepper's eyes to adjust, for her to understand what she was seeing. It looked like a field to her. Steve had said it was an archaeological dig and, now she focused, she could see some kind of ditch in the centre. Parts of it were numbered. A trowel had been left in the picture, for scale. And then she realised that the ditch wasn't a ditch – it was a grave. There was a body, eerily preserved as a result of its wet surroundings – Pepper remembered that from a documentary she's watched a while ago. Its skin was aged with time but still definitely flesh, with creases and folds. She stared and started, waiting for its significance to become clear. She knew the exact moment Tony worked it out because his body stiffened; his hand gripped hers a little more tightly. She turned to look at him but he was staring at the screen. She turned back. And then she saw it.
It was the scar on its chest. The exact dimensions and position for an Arc Reactor. When she saw it, she thought she was going to be sick.
"We ran a DNA test," Steve said. "And yes, that's you, Tony."
The silence stretched on until Pepper didn't think she could breathe.
"But Tony's here," she said. Their hands were still linked together. "He's right here!" she tried to laugh but her voice sounded off-key, hysteria creeping in. She even waved their interlinked hands in the air. She hated the way Tony's hung limply in hers.
"I know," Steve said, slowly, and Pepper tried not to find his tone irritatingly patronising. "I know, Pepper." He glanced over at Tony, anxiety etched into his features. Pepper resisted the urge to turn to Tony, to ask him what the hell he was doing buried in a bog somewhere. "Now," Steve continued. "Here's the creepy part-'
"You mean creepier than my corpse being buried in a hole in England?" Tony asked. Again his voice was strangely expressionless. Pepper turned to him but his profile was stoic, demanding. He was staring at Steve.
Steve was laughing the same kind of pathetic laugh as Pepper's. He was probably just relieved that Tony was still talking. "That is pretty creepy, yes," he said. "But it gets weirder."
Suddenly, The Vision swung his legs around off the chaise-longs and turned to face them. He stared Tony straight in the eye.
"The body hasn't been buried," he said. "A burial means the sediment of the soil and clay is disturbed. This body was simply laid out on the ground. The clay has built up around it. In a nutshell," he said, shrugging. "Tony Stark's dead body has been lying in that marsh for two thousand years."