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There is a man, a mysterious stranger, who walks the Earth alone. He comes and goes as he pleases and as quickly as weather can change. He tells nobody his name and never lingers in one place for too long, preferring a nomadic life.
He’s a healer, they say. He drives into town in that ancient immaculate car and locates the old and weak. One touch is more than enough to take away whatever ails them. They rise, healthy and well, and he is grateful that they have more time to spend on this beautiful planet.
When they offer him money, any sort of compensation, he politely refuses. He’s not doing it for the money, he says. He is merely making the world a slightly better place. Still, he can’t help it when certain people insist on pushing that money into his hands and refusing to take it back. That money is spent exclusively on gas.
This nomadic life also is a way to keep busy. When your life span amounts to ‘many millennia’, you have to pass time somehow. That is how he rolls: passing from town to town and city to city, never making a big show or attracting too many people, healing those souls that need it most and then going on the road again.
He has no attachments, they say. He has no relatives, no possessions except the clothes he wears and the car he drives. The solitude does not seem to bother this calm and collected man. Many think him poor; they’ve seen him lying in the car. He barely rests or sleeps, they say, for he goes around at any time of the day. He does not mind them asking how he survived, but he never answers truthfully. He gets by, he says. He knows they would not be able to wrap their heads around the truth and would think him crazy.
It looks like he survived the end of the world and carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, continuing the fight alone, one person says. They are not entirely wrong. For once, this was true. But those days are long behind him.
He misses them, some days more than others. And maybe once a year, he actively remembers the days of the bunker, of “Team Free Will”, and of the Winchester Gospels. Unfortunately, times run out. The brothers passed away as they had lived – trying to save the world one last time. They succeeded and paid a high price. After this, he took the car and drove off to his life of solitude, keeping his last promise. There was work to do.
When time passes, there aren’t many familiar faces left. Whenever he comes across Rowena, it takes her a while before she remembers or recognizes him. Whenever his family comes down from Heaven to visit him and to beg him to come home, it takes him long to recognize their grace and know their names.
But he cannot just ‘come home’ – Heaven hadn’t been his home for a long time. "Home" was the bunker he left behind, home is the car he drives. He no longer belongs up there and he had a promise to keep and a car to take care of.
There is one family he visits more than once. The daughter was born with a modern disease. Every now and then, he visits her and she allows him to heal her, to relieve her of the pain that had been building up since the last time he came, to do away with constant pain and her muscles burning every time she moves. He owes her; she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Claire Novak, and his vessel is her great-great-great-great-grandfather. It is the least he can do.
Every night, no matter where he is, he steps outside and looks at the stars. He does not think of his siblings or his friends in their Heaven, but of someone else, someone beyond Earth and Heaven. Every night, he takes asks his Father whether his job is finished. Against all odds, he hopes for an answer that never comes. Every time the sun rises, there has been no sign, and he sits back into the car and continues his nomadic life.
The stranger who has seen more than any living soul walks the Earth until the job is done. When that sign comes, when he knows what he has done is enough, he will leave at last and reunite with his friends.