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The man who looks at him down the length of a blade, speckled like a robin's egg with scarlet drops of blood, is coarse. Acerbic. Impenetrable. Eyes glinting crimson, hair wild while the piebald mask on his face still sits completely straight over his features. The visible corner of his mouth is twisted into a wicked grin and Diluc knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this man would spare no seconds in cutting him down.
Lucky for Diluc, hand-to-hand combat is not this man's forte. He can see it in his awkward stance and heaving chest that the sword he picked up from the corpse of one of his men is cumbersome and unfamiliar in his hand. It was seized in a fit of desperation - one that Diluc had not been accounting for, hence the gash on his forearm now weeping blood that soaks through the torn sleeve of his black shirt. But Diluc will not be caught off guard again.
He casts the chains of his Delusion at the man, seeing his eyes snap in defiance as the sword is knocked from his uncertain grip, and is thrown back with their momentum. He stumbles back, but does not fall - this man will never fall. His eyes may vibrate with mad intensity, his celeste hair may stick up in every direction, and he may cackle with an irreverent, ferality that suggests he would be liable to fold in on himself like a house of cards at any given moment.
But this man is too important to fall. He will not fall until he is forced down by the cold grip of death. And the mantle he carries - the mask of a Fatuus, bold and unyielding - still does not hang askew.
Diluc will make sure it doesn't.
"What a quaint little hero you are," the man jeers, his breath turning to vapor upon contact with the frigid Snezhnayan air. "But you wouldn't be half as far if it weren't for my devices, you know. If you really want to prove yourself to be the bigger man, you'd set aside that Delusion and come at me yourself."
Diluc narrows his eyes at him, his forehead wrinkling against the inside of his own mask. He can hear footsteps approaching from the north. Reinforcements are coming. He can't fight off another wave on his own. He has to retreat.
The man takes his silence for shame, and he guffaws obnoxiously. His eyes flash cruelly as Diluc prepares to abscond. And this man - Il Dottore, the Third of the Fatui Harbingers - sneers at him with every last reprehensible fiber of his being.
"Oh, you poor, weak little hero," Dottore crows disdainfully. "Where would you be without me?"
The man who looks at him over the edge of a chaos circuit, half of it strewn across the desk like a fish gutted from stem to stern, is frayed. Overwrought. Vulnerable. Unkempt, his bare face looking somehow even more exposed than naked. His lips are pursed into a discontented frown and Diluc knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is a man drowning on dry land.
Lucky for him, Diluc sweeps into his study carrying a plate of food, a stocky meat-and-potatoes kind of dish, free from the lavish accouterments that he would have been expected to garnish a meal with in a certain other place - another time. One far from here, but in some ways, no less pleasant.
Diluc's forearm aches through his bandages, covered by clothing, but he is careful not to let his discomfort crack through the gentle, metaphorical mask he dons.
Some days, it feels more natural than any of the other masks he wears.
"You look tense," Diluc says with a smile, setting the plate down in front of him. "Why don't you take a break and eat?"
"I'm busy," the man says brusquely, looking back to the device in his hands. But Diluc can see his gaze wavering, flickering to and from the food.
"I know you are. But you have to eat sometime," Diluc urges. He pulls up a chair beside him, bumping shoulders with him a little playfully. "Maybe everything will fall into place once you get your mind straight."
The man looks like he wants to argue some more, but perhaps he was more aware of his wan complexion and unsteady hands than he cared to let on. His displeased countenance does not break, but he relents - he always does. Though he's all sharp angles and dour lines, and he may grouse about being pulled away from his work, he will always relent.
Diluc will make sure he does.
Diluc leans against his shoulder as the man sets aside his work and starts eating, letting out a wistful sigh.
"You need to worry about your health, first and foremost," Diluc mutters softly. "Your work doesn't matter if you're not in the right mind to act."
Your work doesn't matter , Diluc repeats in his head. Don't let it matter. You can be something better than that. We both can.
"Oh, get off my case for once," the man scoffs lightly. But his tone is softening. Some of the tension is melting out of his shoulders as well, and Diluc smirks.
"You're already feeling better though, aren't you?" Diluc asks smugly.
The man sighs in defeat. Diluc looks up at him and sees a subtle warmness creeping into his features as he continues eating. And this man - known only as Henri, a humble scholar in hobby but not by trade, a man whose very existence is a mask meant to conceal another one - smiles to himself with all the fondness of a lover that does not know the man he beds with.
"It's not so bad, I suppose," Henri says, words meant for derision but lacking in the conviction to be truly disingenuous. He exhales lightly, relenting further - though always just short of far enough. "Where would I be without you, Diluc?"
Diluc's stomach twists itself into knots. But he can't go back now, no matter how much he wants to.
All he can do is wait; for one man to relent, or for another to fall.