Barton sat in the rental car drumming his fingers on the wheel in time with the song on the radio as he tried to let go of the anger directed at the rude motorist who'd cut him off seconds before the traffic came to a screeching halt in front of him. He'd learned a great deal of patience in his line of work, but somehow traffic always made his blood boil; down on the ground, everything seemed so… unclear.
"Legolas, what's keeping you?" Stark's voice appeared a split second before the bored genius billionaire hacked the car's GPS and appeared as a hologram projected through the car's security system. Barton lifted his foot off the break to address the threat his mind hadn't caught up to yet and almost smashed the blue Lexus into the back of the bright yellow cab in front of him. He slammed on the breaks and caught a glimpse of the cars behind him, jockeying for the quarter of an inch of asphalt he'd opened up by mistake.
"Holy mother of…" Barton swore. "Could you warn a guy before appearing next to him?"
"Sorry, not sorry," Stark smirked. "Why are you so late? We're about to start! How much longer according to the GPS?"
"I'm stuck in a traffic jam, unfortunately. If I started moving right this second, it insists I'll be there in about thirty minutes. I guess you'll have to start without me. Tell Cap I'm sorry."
"An hour?" Stark said, his voice dripping with incredulity. "Let me look; you must have done it wrong."
"I programmed it with the coordinates you sent me this morning. I can't help what it says," he replied, his voice short and precise.
"Don't get all snippy on me, Katniss."
The projection of Tony, stretched out comfortably over the seat beside him, didn't move but after a few seconds – in which the traffic did not move an inch while horns continued to blare – Tony sighed.
"Don't blame me for your human error," Stark snorted. "You've put in the wrong coordinates. I can't help that you're in the middle of nowhere, Clint. You're on the completely wrong side of the Lincoln Tunnel."
"First off, Jersey isn't the middle of nowhere –"
"No," Stark said, cutting him off. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter Hoboken. How did you even manage that with your eagle eyes?"
Clint pulled his cell phone from his pocket and stabbed angrily at the buttons, forwarding the last message he'd received from Stark back to him. "Secondly, read that and tell me I put in the address wrong," Barton demanded. He heard a tone as Stark receive the message and then waited. For about three seconds, there was no sound except that of the crazed motorists' honking at each other and some colorful epithets from pedestrian bystanders.
"Jarvis, pull up my text message records and check them against Barton's. Someone hacked your phone because, clearly, these are not the coordinates I sent you this morning."
"Of course, sir," Jarvis replied immediately. "They are a match. These are indeed the coordinates you sent Agent Barton this morning." Barton stifled a snicker. Was he imagining that Jarvis seemed so pleased?
"I'm not an Agent anymore –"
"Keep telling yourself that, Sagittarius," Stark said, distracted by something on the other end. "I believe that as much as I believe Phil's dead."
"You know, I'm actually a Capricorn."
"Shut up and don't ruin it; Capricorn doesn't follow the pattern."
The traffic moved about an inch forward and by the time he'd reacted, the gap had been filled with a beat up red Toyota pickup truck blaring heavy metal music.
A nervous chuckle preceded Stark's next comment. "So, funny story," he paused, trying to make the laugh sound genuine. "I sent you the coordinates for a restaurant I really like."
"Oh, joy," Barton said, not bothering to disguise the contempt in his voice. "I've been sitting in traffic for forty-five minutes because you're hungry?"
"It's really good pizza."
Barton knew that was as good an apology he was going to get.
"Since you're almost already there, you could –"
"I'm not playing errand boy for you. So, what's my exit strategy, Tony? How do I get out of this gridlock and back to the Avengers Tower?"
"Jarvis, what's the holdup with traffic?" Stark asked. "Is it likely to clear up soon?"
"Very unlikely, sir," the placid voice responded. "At four in the afternoon on a Friday, the chances are astronomically bad that Agent Barton will be able to arrive before the party begins. The construction on I-78W has closed one lane for over a mile."
"Who's the idiot who decided to do construction at rush hour on a Friday afternoon?" Stark asked.
"That would be the New York Department of Transportation. Would you like me to contact them, sir? Perhaps we could register a complaint" Jarvis asked.
"Bureaucrats: that figures. Never mind, Jarvis."
"Won't they ever be finished rebuilding this city?" Barton asked. "We did a lot of damage –"
"We didn't do anything, William Tell," Stark cut him off, "except rebuff an invasion from another planet. They can blame us all they want, but if they were under Chitauri rule right now, those who survived would call us cowards for not doing enough. No one is ever happy."
"But if we weren't here to begin with, Loki wouldn't –"
"Wouldn't have what? I tell you what he wouldn't have done," Stark said, raising his voice with each word. "He wouldn't have conquered the world without a fight. If it hadn't been us, someone else would have risen to challenge him. You're not that naïve, Robin Hood."
"I was wondering when you'd get around to that one," Barton said, unable to keep the chuckle from seeping into his voice. It wasn't that he doubted Stark was right, but nothing associated with Loki made him feel right inside, even now.
"I don't mean to interrupt, sirs, but I could send a helicopter to pick up Agent Barton," Jarvis suggested. "There are several suitable landing pads in his vicinity."
"What about the rental car?" Barton asked.
"I'll take care of that." Stark sighed. "Get to high ground; it's what you're best at, after all."
Barton got out of the car as all the angry motorists' eyes watched him. He popped the trunk and retrieved his bow case and backpack, then closed the doors and chirped the alarm. He weaved between cars as spectators snapped his photo with their cell phones.
He walked for nearly a mile before his phone received a message from Jarvis with a new set of coordinates. He inputted them and found he was less than a hundred yards from his evac point. He caught the apartment door as a resident exited and took the stairs up to the roof where a gleaming Stark Enterprise helicopter was waiting for him.