"Yes. We deal with the things no one else can or wants to. It's nice to get a break from that once in a while." Lessa shrugged. "Is that so surprising?"

"Not at all," Loki replied. He went quiet again, just watching her.

Lessa tilted her head a bit as she studied him right back. Even now, his emotions were more muted, harder to read, and also a little alien. Which made sense but was still intriguing.

Loki was perfectly happy to let the silence stretch. He wasn't exactly talkative, after all.

Lessa found his company oddly relaxing, just sitting there for a while. Then she stood.

"Let me know if there's anything you need," she said. "I'll stop by tomorrow, if you'd like."

Loki just waved a hand at her rather than verbally responding. He didn't care if she came back or not, and he couldn't stop her if she wanted to.

Lessa nodded and left again, shutting the door after her quietly before she went to go do some reading.

Later that night, Lavender ended up wandering her way down towards the labs. It was definitely later than she would have normally been up, but she hadn't been able to sleep and wanted to see if anyone else was awake. She'd been informed by Jarvis that Tony and Bruce were both down in the lab doing science, so she went to go take a look.

Bruce and Tony were not in fact doing science. They were doing magic. Wandless magic to be precise. Bruce knew how and was teaching Tony, which was going surprisingly well, considering Tony's track record with explosions and overdoing things.

Lavender stopped at the glass and just stared for a few moments. All of a sudden, everything about them made a whole lot more sense. After another moment of watching, she knocked on the glass.

They both jumped and hurried stopped what they were doing, going back to the computers and bringing up some science stuff. A few moments later, Jarvis opened the door per Tony's say-so.

"All of a sudden, this entire place makes a lot more sense," Lavender said as she stepped into the lab. "I'm not sure how you both managed to keep under the radar, but I'm thoroughly impressed that you did."

"Under what radar?" Tony said. "We weren't doing anything, just science, which is awesome, we do science all the time, Bruce is still in awe of my science stuff here, this is what we do, we science and experiment and blow things up."

"Impressive bullshit, but still bullshit," Lavender said, grinning a bit. "I know the difference between science and magic, and I totally saw everything."

Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and had a whole silent conversation, debating if she would be a problem and if they'd have to do something to keep her quiet. Bruce won and Tony grumped, settling back in his seat.

"Since you saw, I would hope you know how, ah, important it is to us to keep this between us."

Lavender held up her hands in surrender.

"Hey, you've gone this long without anyone figuring it out," she said. "I figure you've got a good reason for not saying anything, all things considered." She grinned and shrugged a bit. "I mean, hey, no laws are being broken, so I see no reason to say anything."

Bruce nodded, relaxing a bit. He knew Tony would keep an eye on her anyway and keep tabs on her technology, but Bruce couldn't do anything about that.

"Was there something you needed? You're up rather late."

"Nah, just couldn't sleep," Lavender replied. "And coffee in the morning is easier to make than a sleeping potion now."

Tony snorted at that. Yeah, he lived on coffee. Bruce made a vaguely disapproving face, but he didn't say anything. He was too used to Tony by now.

"So what were you guys working on?" Lavender asked, curious. "Really."

"Wandless magic," Bruce answered after a moment. "I, ah, I'm helping Tony."

"You mean you're teaching me," Tony grumbled.

Lavender blinked.

"Wandless magic?" she repeated. "That's really advanced. How did you learn?"

"Trial and error," Bruce said with a shrug. "It helped. When I was running."

"Impressive," Lavender said. And she really was impressed; wandless magic was supposed to be hard to learn. "I've never known anyone who could do wandless magic."

"It gets easier with practice," Bruce said with a modest little shrug.

"It's a bitch to learn, though," Tony grumbled.