Chapter Two: Realizations
When the Winchester brothers resurfaced, it was because a demon had set the younger's world aflame and made him watch it burn. The Hunting world ignored them for the first three weeks of their return. As far as anyone was concerned, they were just little boys following in their father's footsteps. Then word spread that they had found and exorcised a demon in less than an hour and still managed to keep it secret from a plane full of civilians.
After that, Hunters kept the name Winchester at the back of their minds. Rumors spread and the legend of the Winchesters began to take root, and no one noticed. It was barely a week after the demon that someone sat down in the Roadhouse and loudly and drunkenly proclaimed that Bloody Mary was real and the Winchesters had killed her. People only laughed and wondered if they shouldn't.
When a news station in Missouri said that the elder had been convicted of murder and killed, Ellen raised a toast because Hunters didn't kill humans.
"To Dean Winchester," she said, and one of the brothers finally had a name. "A good man and a better Hunter."
The Winchester brothers, both of them, were back to work within the month. It was the first time (and far from the last, though no one knew it yet) that a Winchester came back from the dead.
The second time was not quite two months later and not even half as public. The story told of a reaper bound who pulled Dean Winchester back from the brink of death, and no one believed it for a second. Not because it was impossible, but because it was insane. Because binding a reaper was like lighting a candle in a hay barn and telling it not to start a fire. Even so, Ellen made another toast: to a Hunter fallen, and privately wondered if she should come up with a separate toast for a Winchester fallen.