It's a complete accident that Kobal sees him at all.

Kobal's walking down the street, hands in his pocket, radiating an aura he's cultivated for some time, that of fuck off and die. Most humans are smart enough to avoid him, which is just as well; he doesn't want to see them, doesn't want to deal with them and their fucking stupid human shit, fuck it.

There's a reason he stays in Hell most of the time, and he's on earth today to remind himself of that. At least the humans there have *proven* they're all useless shit.

So he's not watching the sidewalk for the assholes who can't bother to get themselves a fucking job when one of them reaches out and snags the bottom of his trenchcoat.

When I rule the world, people will know not to fucking bug Demon Princes. He grit his teeth, didn't look down, waited for the man to let go. Falling anvil in ten seconds on him, I fucking swear--

He whirls, and the threat he was going to present dies on his lips, looking down.

"Hey," Eli, Archangel of Creation, croaks, guitar discarded in his lap, and grins up at Kobal with crooked rotting teeth. "Spare change?"

Kobal jerks his jacket out of Eli's slack grasp and scowls down at him. "Eli. Aren't you on the run or some shit?"

"Eli?" Eli asks. His grin is wider and his eyes blank. "You got me confused with some other man, man, I'm the Guitar Man."

"The Guitar Man," Kobal repeated. He laughed once, short and sharp. "Knock it off, you asshole."

"They call me the Guitar Man because I play the guitar," Eli said, raising the guitar helpfully. "I don't got no other name."

Kobal's eyes roll. "Riiight." He squats in front of Eli, makes a face at the smell the Archangel's managed to grow for himself. "You know who I am, Guitar Man?"

"A cool cat about to give me some cash?"

"I'm the Demon Prince of Dark Humour," Kobal tells him, and waits.

Nothing registers, even though Eli seems to consider that. "Whoaaaaaaa," he says. "That's, like, deep." He strums a few cords on his guitar. "Like, an actual Demon Prince? From Hell and shit?"

"Precisely so." Kobal waits, and Eli's not *getting* it, why the fuck isn't Eli getting it? They've been at odds, though never enemies, and while Kobal hasn't heard jack from him since Eli left heaven to take a walkabout on earth, it's been lasting years, hundreds, thousands of years--

"You here for my soul, demon-dude?" Eli asks, strangely cheerful. "Because I got soul, man, I'm full of soul."

Eyes rolling again, Kobal nods. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here for your soul."

"Whoa. Well, I've gone done my share of sins, I guess I can't argue." Eli rises shakily, staggering back against the wall a minute, guitar in his hands. "So let's go, man, I've done my time."

Kobal takes him to a hotel, and tells him it's Hell, and waits for the Archangel to fucking show himself, so he doesn't act like a fucking *remnant*, a dead angel with no memory. Eli peers up at the hotel and agrees, "Yeah, man, yeah, it looks like hell, don't it?"

*Angry* now, Kobal grabs him, drags him up, gets a room, tells him it's Eli's cell, the place he'll stay from here on in, and Eli takes a look around.

"Cushy, man," Eli says, and takes a seat on the bed, playing the guitar. It's the most beautiful music Kobal's ever heard and god fucking *damnit*, where's Eli gone?

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Kobal asks. His anger doesn't want to be contained, it's TIRED of being contained, and as an afterthought he throws a lamp at Eli and misses. He shouldn't have missed; he's a demon prince, and his aim is miles above any living human's. But then, so is Eli's ability to dodge. He shouldn't have attacked; Eli's Creation, he can use his fucking toe-lint as a deadly weapon, but Eli isn't fighting back. "Cut it the fuck out!"

Eli's fingers pause on the guitar and he gives Kobal a smile, strange and sad and small. "Hey, man. I'm just me."

"It's not funny," Kobal snarls at him. "This isn't fucking funny, it's not--"

Abruptly, his knees give out and he sinks down against the wall. He's tired all of a sudden, like this thing, this vital anger that's been driving him for God alone knows gone, just vanished, leaving him weak.

"I can't go home," Kobal says.

Eli puts the guitar down and rises. His smile's changed, is almost beatific. Arms spread, he tilts his head up to look at the ceiling, spreads his arms wide to encompass the world. "This is home," he says.

And there's the Archangel again.

Kobal puts his head in his hands and laughs and cries until he can't remember which he was doing first.

"I've come home," he manages, and hears Eli playing the guitar.