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You do not want to be performing any clandestine activities around one Colin Moriarty. Not unless you intend to employ at least fifteen different levels of obscurement device and also draw up a will, just in case. Luckily, for the former headmaster and professor known as Igor Karkaroff, he is extremely good at obscuring any and all activities which may get him in trouble, as well as being extremely good at running away and hiding. He also regularly consoles himself with the knowledge that in post apocalyptic Washington DC he is not attempting to evade a dark lord, but a bartender. An Irish bartender, true, but a bartender all the same. Igor's a wizard of considerable skill. He will be okay.
Such lines and similar sentiments he repeats to himself as he makes his way up and down and up again through the rickety, rusty, and occasionally wet 'streets' of the city of Megaton, fairest jewel of the Capital Wasteland. He found his way to this gentrified crater and home away from home during his search for a refuge from the Death Eaters who had suddenly grown a spine upon the return of Voldemort, and while he has occasionally thought about returning to his world to see if things have once again died down to a nice livable level of inferno, he hasn't actually done so ever since meeting a certain whore, .
And to call Nova a whore is simply to describe her job. Attempting to dance around the subject only causes you to lose her respect, something the former headmaster quickly deduced. He found that she likes it if people do not become all weird about the situation, neither condemnatory not fetishistic, so he treats the word like he treats the words 'barman' or 'wastelander'. There's no need to bring it up constantly, nor to quail before it. Still, he'd like for her not to be trapped within that nightmare of sexual slavery. He'd like to save her, a wish he knows makes him a sap. A stock character and a cliche. But love has this wonderful way of turning humiliation into sweet honey, and the stigma attached in marrying a prostitute, a stigma which survived the end of the world without a single radiation burn to show for it, cannot hurt him.
But one does not simply steal from Colin Moriarty and expect to live happily ever after, post apocalypse or no post apocalypse.
Sheets of tin bang and boom under his expensively booted feet, forming a fool's chorus to cheer the love struck idiot up to the highest rung of Megaton, where the wealthiest and most longtime residents make their abodes. Moriarty's Saloon not only reigns supreme up there, but reigns supreme over the entire settlement, squatting between two sets of toilets and the water treatment plant, giving it a perfect view of the gate. Praying he doesn't make it to the top of the aerial street while it's owner is enjoying himself and lording it over everyone by peering down from the balcony of his prime real estate, Igor is disappointed when he turns a rusted, sheet metal corner to come face to face with the side of the Irishman's head. Leaning on the railing of the walkway, the gangster stands and smokes, jetting off-white clouds of vapour over the edge, ever present smirk in place.
At fifty, the man is quite a bit younger than the wizard, and looks even younger than that, despite the unfortunate climate of the Capital Wasteland and the extended longevity of magical folk. That's stress for you. Colin Moriarty somehow suffers less from it than Igor Karkaroff does. Or did. The Capital Wasteland is a grand old place to a man used to looking over his shoulder for a Mr Tom Riddle.
"Ah, Karkaroff. Fancy seeing you up here, you barfly. What will it be today? The usual?" Colin turns a smirk like a knife on the ex-professor, the blades of his lips staying turned down even while he affects a smile, his ice blue eyes as hard as the parched soil of the wasteland. But he always looks like that, at everyone except for his favourite girl, Nova, and even she still gets a bit of the old ice.
"Um…" the greeting is disconcerting to Igor, but all greetings, all words from the morally bankrupt Moriarty are disconcerting. It can't be helped. One must simply attempt to discern where the greatest threat is likely to come from and do one's best to parry it. "Yes. Certainly, Mr Moriarty. You know me. I can't stay away." he simpers.
"Mmm…As long as you keep paying, you're always welcome at Moriarty's." says the titular Moriarty, licking his lips in anticipation of the caps to come.
Strafing past the aggressive Celt is something Igor does daily, and he performs the move again, gratifying the shorter man by this obvious show of fear and deference. Really, he could keep on visiting Nova as much as he likes and Colin wouldn't care so long as he paid up - it's the emotional element he won't t care for. Love makes people do stupid things, like attempt to break a loved one out of slavery.
And really, even if it was only Igor who was in love, that still wouldn't concern the pimp much. Johns thinking they are in love with prostitutes are a cap a dozen.
The metal door opens with a red groan, flakes of rust peeling off and fluttering to the tin floor. Igor must duck to enter, an unfortunate fact of biology and post apocalyptic architecture that means he misses the first jolt of anticipation rewarded with which Nova is afflicted whenever he enters the bar. An electrical shock runs through the abused body of the young woman, and she places the foot down which she typically keeps raised and pressed to the wall. For her own part, the wizard is unlike anyone else she's ever met, bringing the richness and luxury of the Old World with him, but an even older world than the one termed that by the residents of the Wasteland. There's something magical about him, and she enjoys his dark good looks and comforting size. Maybe she wouldn't say she's in love, because even the possibility of such a hopeful state of being has been beaten out of her, but she certainly prefers the strange man in furs to all her other clients, and looks forward to his visits. It helps greatly that he's not cruel and that he pays her generous tips, even managing to convince Moriarty to let her keep more of them for herself.
"Hey, Igor, honey. How are you doin' today?" Nova, after checking behind the tall man blocking most of her vision, plucks at the lapel of his sable coat. She didn't mean to give away such a familiar sign of affection, especially not publically, but there you have it. At least Colin has not entered the saloon behind the most foreign citizen of Megaton.
"I'm always doing well on a day I am able to see you, dear, sweet Nova." Igor, his great charm and social ability undiminished by his presence in a post-nuclear hell hole, proffers from behind his back a bouquet of untainted flowers he magicked up from his own world. To see Nova's eyes light up in delight as they do now, that brings a new and ultimate dimension to being born with magical ability. Purebloods, mudbloods, all of that blood purity nonsense, it matters not so long as he can bring beauty and joy to his lady love. Nothing but pity and contempt remains in him for Voldemort. All that power, and at no point did the wretch do anything worthwhile with it.
Nova fills her nose with the scent of orchids and lilies and roses. "Thank you so much, darlin'. Shall we head upstairs? Colin won't spend much longer gazing down on his muddy little kingdom." She says that because she and Igor like to talk together, and Moriarty likes to listen in on any talk taking place anywhere he can possibly eavesdrop, or have others eavesdrop on. He is not at all shamefaced about it either.
The pair retreat upstairs, where they whisper together.
"Nova, come away with me."
"Igor, baby, you know I can't."
"Why not? I can protect you. I can look after you."
Those words, so dear, yet promised to Nova by other men. Other, lesser men, or at least, less obviously wealthy men than Igor. The temptation is great to simply get up and go, but the tie, and threat of Colin is ever present. There is nowhere to run that he won't be able to claw his way into, or so she believes. Glancing up from her position sitting on the end of the bed, leaning on her man's silky furred shoulder, Nova is just in time to catch the slightest movement of the door, the slightest widening of the long line of shadow between the door and jam.
"Igor!" she shrieks, her mind lagging behind her tongue. She doesn't know why the movement should fill her with terror, but it does.
Igor, for his part, reacts from an even greater level of instinct. Instinct long honed and always listened to. Grabbing his poor little redheaded whore, he disapparates just as Colin bursts through the door and depresses the trigger of his 10mm pistol, leaving behind nothing but a bullet hole in the sheet metal wall.