At the Magic Box, the gang talks about throwing a party for Buffy's birthday the following night, but Buffy thinks that they need to stay focused on coming up with a way to stop Glory.  Giles says it's gonna be pretty difficult, because based upon the information the Council provided he's discovered that Glory (along with two other hell-gods) ruled a particularly unpleasant demon dimension.  Tara is surprised that there's more than one, but Anya tells her there are thousands, all co-existing along side this dimension.  Buffy remarks that Glory obviously found a way into ours, but wonders why she doesn't seem very God-like, as far as powers go.  She's tough, but she doesn't seem to be able to do anything mega supernatural.  Giles says it must be because she's in human form, and her powers are severely limited.  He mentions that she's unstable, and Xander can't believe they have to fight a crazy super-strength hellgod.  Giles goes on to tell them of Glory's sanity-sucking tendencies, and says that's why there's such an overflow of psychos in Sunnydale, at present.  Everyone volunteers to help, and Xander says this is all great long-term planning, but what's up with this key thing that Glory wants?  Buffy and Giles exchange a look, and Buffy tells them that she and Giles know where the key is.  Everyone's stunned that Buffy knew and didn't tell them, and Buffy says she was just worried that if they knew it would put them in danger.  "More danger than usual?" Xander asks.  Willow says Buffy should have said something, and Buffy says she's right.  She looks at Giles and says it's time, and he asks her if she's sure. Buffy says if they're going to be risking their lives, they deserve to know.  Everyone's really curious, now.  Buffy says "There's something you have to know about Dawn." Cut to some Knights of Byzantium (KoB) out in the woods around a bonfire, praying or something, and chanting that the key is the link, and the link must be severed.  Some of Glory's minions show up and a fight breaks out, but all of the minions get killed pretty quickly except for Jinx.  One of the KoB approaches, ready to do him in, but Glory shows up and kills all the Knights instead.  The next morning, Dawn and Tara do an early warning incantation around the magic shop, which should sound some sirens and stuff if anything "hell god-y" comes near it.  Dawn comes up during the spell, and they act kind of weird around her, but tell her they already did one around her house.  Dawn notices that they seem a little "off", and just goes into the shop.  Inside, she gets some more weird behaviour from Xander and Anya, neither of which seem to know how to really act around her, and quickly leave.  Dawn goes over to the counter as Giles and Buffy come out of the back room from training. As they talk, Dawn notices some journals that Giles has in his hand, but he puts them in a drawer when Dawn isn't looking, and when she looks back, they're gone.  Dawn teases Buffy a bit about how she's just worried about fighting Glory because she's prettier than Buffy.  Buffy says Glory is evil, and insane, and in no way prettier than she is.  Dawn says Glory didn't look all that tough to her. Cut to Glory in her apartment, torturing the last KoB from the night before for information about the key.  He doesn't know where it is, however, and Glory ends up sucking his sanity.  Later, at the Summers house, Buffy opens her presents, as Anya gets all excited and wishes she was having a birthday party.  Dawn gives Buffy a picture of them and their dad in San Diego, mentioning that she made the frame herself with the shells they picked off the beach that day. Buffy says she remembers, and then shots of everyone's faces as they realize that never really happened.  Buffy hugs Dawn, and Dawn wonders why everyone's so solemn all the sudden.  Later on, Buffy and Giles and Joyce talk in the kitchen about what Dawn is, and she snoops from the dining room. Buffy sees her standing out there, and Dawn pretends she was just getting plates.  She goes back into the living room and everyone gets real quiet.  She finally snaps, and asks why everyone acts weird around her.  Xander denies it, but Dawn knows it's true and eventually just storms out. Cut to outside, Dawn climbs down the trellis from her window to the ground below.  She starts off, but immediately runs into Spike, who's standing out in the back yard smoking a cigarette, and holding a box of candy.  Dawn grins and teases him that he brought a present for Buffy, which is ridiculous 'cause the box is all bent up, and it's a lame present anyway, and Buffy would never even touch anything he gave her.  Spike tries to intimidate her, but Dawn just laughs and says that she's badder than he is.  Spike is indignant, and says she isn't.  Dawn retorts that he's standing out in the yard hugging a box of chocolates while she's sneaking out to go break into the magic shop to steal things.  Spike contemplates that there are a lot of nasties out there in between her and the shop, who would love to get a taste of her, and that wouldn't sit well with big sis.  Dawn looks a little unnerved, and asks him if he wants to come along to steal some stuff.  Spike quickly agrees. At the Magic Box, Spike jimmies the door open, and they go inside, Dawn revealing that she's there looking for a book she saw Giles with earlier.  She finds the journal in a drawer behind the counter, and we cut to her and Spike sitting on the floor with candles lit, reading from the book.  Dawn finds a passage about the key, just as Spike's walking around and finds the troll hammer.  Excited, he tries to pick it up but it's far too heavy.  Covering quickly, he tells Dawn it wouldn't go with his stuff anyway.  Dawn continues to read from the book that there are no illustrations of the key, but by all accounts it's basically a big blob of energy that cannot be seen by normal human perception.  But those outside reality can perceive its true form.  Spike says that means second sight people, mostly, or even run of the mill lunatics, and Dawn remembers the two crazy guys who said she wasn't real.  She reads on, and it says that the key can also be perceived by animals, particularly canine and serpentine animals, and Dawn remembers the big snake Glory sent to find the key looking at her.  Spike takes the book away, and continues to read that the monks possessed the ability to transform energy; bend reality.  He reads that the monks had to be sure the slayer would protect the key with her life, so they sent it to her in the form of a human; in the form of her sister.  Spike puts the book down as they both realize that Dawn is the key.  Back at the house, Buffy's talking to Willow and Tara about how she hasn't heard anything from Riley, when Dawn appears behind Buffy with a knife in one hand; the other stretched out and bleeding from where she's cut herself.  Everyone runs to Dawn, and she asks if it's real blood.  If she's real at all.  She says she's not a key, but then wants to know what she is.  Buffy realizes she knows.  Later, everyone leaves and Buffy and Joyce go up to Dawn's room.  She wants to know why they didn't tell her, and Joyce says they were going to wait until she was older.  Dawn wants to know how old she is now; how long since the monks sent her there, and Buffy tells her six months.  Dawn is upset, and says that everything about her is made up.  She's bitter because she thinks Buffy only cares about her and worries about her because she has to. She yells for Buffy to get out of her room.   At the Magic Box the next morning, Buffy wants to know everything she can find out about the key; she says Dawn deserves to know where she came from.  Giles looks at his books strewn about and wonders how Dawn found them; how she even got in there.  Anya finds a cigarette butt in the "urn of ishtar", and Buffy realizes it was Spike. Cut to the crypt.  Buffy bursts in and attacks Spike with the lid of the coffin thingy in there.  She asks him how he could let Dawn find out like that, and Spike says he didn't know; he was just along for the ride.  Buffy says he should have stopped her, and Spike gets angry and says he's tired of taking the fall.  That Dawn would have gone anyway, and he just thought she'd be safer with him along to keep an eye on her.  And that if Buffy had just been honest with Dawn from the beginning, she wouldn't be here now trying to make herself feel better by taking it out on Spike.  Buffy has nothing to say to that, and leaves, and Spike looks regretful. Back at the house, Joyce tries to get Dawn to go to school, but she doesn't thinks blobs of energy should have to go.  Joyce tries to play nice, but Dawn gets angry with her, saying she's not her mother, and eventually leaves, saying she changed her mind; she's going to school.  Cut to the hospital, where Ben comes in with morning meds for the mental patients.  He sees the KoB guy that Glory just brain-sucked the day before, and says "Byzantium!"  Jinx comes out of the shadows and confirms that they're there.  Ben asks how many, and Jinx tells him the KoB are like ants at a picnic.  First there are a few, but pretty soon there are thousands.  Jinx says that Ben's fate is tied directly to that of Glory's, so he'd better cooperate.  Ben says that he can't threaten him; Glory can't touch him and they all know it.  Ben stalks out. Back at the house that night, Dawn looks at all of her old journals, as Buffy and Joyce sit downstairs and discuss how best to deal with the situation.  Dawn sneaks out to the stairs and overhears the worst possible part of the conversation, where Buffy's saying that Dawn isn't real, and they're not her family.  Dawn, upset, goes back into her room and throws a tantrum, completely trashing the room and setting her journals on fire inside her garbage can.  She then runs out the window.  The fire alarm goes off, and Buffy at first thinks it's Willow's spell for Glory, but Joyce realizes that it's the fire alarm.  They run upstairs and find Dawn gone, and Buffy puts out the fire.  At the Magic Box, Buffy tells the gang plus Spike that Dawn burned her journals and ran away.  She asks them all to help her look for her, and splits them all up into groups to go search.  Cut to Dawn on the playground, remembering false memories of Buffy and her playing there.  Cut to Xander and Giles looking around for Dawn in their section of town, cut to Buffy and Giles looking for Dawn at the playground after Dawn's left.  Buffy says that Spike was right; this is her fault because she didn't tell Dawn the truth.  Spike says she probably would have run off anyway, that's what teenagers do.  He sees that she's really worried, though, and tries to actually reassure her.  They hear sirens in the distance. Cut to Dawn walking along, as an ambulance passes her by.  Dawn follows it, and enters the hospital.  She makes her way to the mental ward, and tries to ask the crazy people there what she is.  They all get really agitated when she enters, but none of them are coherent enough to answer her questions. She finally asks "What am I?" and the KoB guy strapped to his bed answers "the key".  Dawn tries to question him, but he just keeps repeating over and over that he found it.  Ben comes in and finds her, and takes her to the employee room where they have some coffee.  He tries to get her to talk, but she tells him she's nothing.  She's just some thing the monks made so that Glory can find her.  Ben's eyes get huge, and he stands up.  "You're the key!" he says. Dawn wants to know how he knows, and Ben starts ranting about how she needs to run because she's what Glory's been searching for, and she's coming.  Dawn watches in confusion, and Ben suddenly says "She's here!", and turns into Glory.  Glory talks to Dawn as she goes to Ben's locker and changes into a red dress.  She wants to know what Ben was talking to Dawn about, and Dawn realizes Glory doesn't know.  A guard comes in and tells her this room is for hospital staff only, and she breaks his neck, taking Dawn and saying they'll have to find a nice quiet room to talk.  Out in the cemetery, the gang all meets up, and no one's had any luck in locating Dawn.  Buffy worries that anything could have happened to her, and they all go to check the hospital.  In an x-ray room, Glory asks Dawn if she knows where Buffy hid the key.  Dawn plays it smart, saying she's not sure, and asks her what it looks like.  Glory describes it as a swirly green shimmer, but says the monks pulled an abra cadabra, and now it can look like anything.  Dawn tells her that maybe if Glory told her more about it, Dawn would know if she's seen it.  Downstairs, Buffy tells the gang that Dawn hasn't been admitted for anything, but then overhears a security guard talking about the dead guard found in the employee room, whose head was twisted practically clean off.  Buffy realizes Glory was there. Back up in the x-ray room, Dawn establishes that the key has been around for "this side of forever".  She asks if the key is evil, and Glory says yeah, but then recants and says it depends on your point of view.  Dawn then asks if it unlocks something, and Glory says yes. When Dawn asks what it opens, Glory becomes suspicious.  She says she's starting to think that Dawn doesn't have any idea where her key is.  But, she says, it doesn't have to be a total waste of her time, because she's been meaning to send the slayer a message, and she could sure use a "pick me up" right about now. She moves in on Dawn, but just then Buffy and the whole gang burst in. Spike holds Glory from behind and Buffy whacks her a few, until Glory sends Spike flying and knocks him out.  Xander tries to hit her with a crowbar, and Giles tries to shoot her with a crossbow, but neither have any effect on her.  Willow and Tara start chanting a spell, as Buffy and Glory fight some more.  Glory grabs the crowbar and throws it at Dawn, but Buffy throws herself in front of it and gets impaled with it.  Tara and Willow finish the spell and throw some glittery stuff on Glory.  Willow says some magic-y words and Glory poofs away.  Buffy asks where she went, and Willow says the teleportation spell still has a few kinks, and she's not sure. Cut to Glory coalescing high above Sunnydale.  She hovers there for a moment, just long enough to realize her predicament, and then drops like a meteor.  Back in the x-ray room, everyone picks themselves up from the floor. Buffy asks Dawn if she's okay, and Dawn wants to know why she cares.  Buffy says she's her sister, and Dawn says she's not. Buffy opens Dawn's hand, which has blood on it, and then touches her own wound from the crossbow and holds their hands together, saying that it's Summer's blood, just like hers.  That it doesn't matter where she came from, or what she's meant to do, she's still her sister.  They hug.  When they stand up, Dawn says "wait!", and remembers that Ben was there, trying to help her, but she can't remember where he went. Buffy says it's okay, they'll thank him later.  Dawn worries that Joyce will be mad at her for the whole fire thing, but Buffy says she's probably got a "get out of jail free" card this time, on account of all the drama.  Buffy and Dawn walk out holding hands. FLAWS:             When Buffy tells the gang that Dawn burned up her journals, Willow says "But she's been keeping those since she was"  Buffy finishes "Since she was seven.  I remember too, Will."  Okay, I get that everyone's got all these memories about Dawn, but Willow shouldn't remember when Dawn started keeping journals because Dawn wouldn't even have been in Sunnydale at that point in time.  I mean, Dawn is 14 now.  We're in the fifth season.  Dawn told Riley in "Shadow" that she was ten when they moved to Sunnydale.  Willow didn't even know Dawn at seven. THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:           All around a good episode, I think.  Dawn finally finds out what she is, and I think MT did a good job portraying Dawn's confusion and despair at finding out she wasn't real.  The scene with her and the knife, and the blood, and then her yelling for Buffy to get out of her room were both really good.  I also like the Dawn / Spike dymanic, that kinda started in this episode when they went off to break into the magic box together.  Eventually, Dawn becomes pretty much the only other member of the Scooby Gang that he can stand, besides the slayer.  They're pretty funny together  ;)     Let's see, what else.  We learn some more about Glory, including the fact that she and Ben apparently share a body, for whatever reason.  And the rest of the gang finds out that Dawn is the key, too.  We've also got Spike once again helping Buffy and the gang, and at this point she's kind of come to trust him, obviously. That all comes to a head next week, in "Crush"  ;) BEST LINE: Dawn:  "Jeez, lurk much?!" Spike:  "I wasn't lurking.  I was standing about.  It's a whole different vibe." and: Buffy:  "How could you let her find out like that?  From books and paper!" Spike:  "It's not like I knew she was mystical glowy key thing.  Nobody keeps me in the bloody loop, do they?"

"Blood Ties"