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Thicker Than Water - by Little Willow
From Slayground.net - February 27th, 2001
The series Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always had its own way of dealing with 'issues.' There's never been a Very Special Episode, and there needs to be one designated as such. Why? Because each and every episode is special - and each turns a term, phrase, urban legend or sense of reality into something new. In Season Two, "Surprise" and "Innocence" turned bliss into heartbreak, making Buffy experience a horrid version of the Day After Syndrome, with boyfriend Angel truly no longer the man (vampire) she thought he was. Other episodes such as "Lie to Me" and "Earshot" put a twist on teen suicide. As far as family goes, Buffy's mentor Giles and best friends Willow and Xander have become a surrogate family of sorts.
Now, with the episode "Blood Ties," we have a new topic - adoption.
"Is this blood?"
In this installment of the fabulously inventive series, Dawn learns that she is the Key - not Buffy's sister. Not real. Just energy thousands of years old made into an innocent human. According to villain of the season Glory, a god who needs the Key for reasons yet unknown, the Key has been around "just this side of forever." Glory at first says that it is evil, but then admits that it depends on your point of view. There are still many questions to be asked and answered about the Key's origins, true nature, terms of use and so on.
"This is blood, isn't it? It can't be me. I'm not a Key. I'm not a thing."
Dawn thought she was a fourteen year old human, sister to Buffy, daughter to Joyce. Now all of that has been stripped from her, and she discovers she's only truly been around for half a year. Six months ago, an order of Monks which protected the Key had to hide it from Glory, so they gave it form and sent it to the Slayer. To make sure that Buffy would protect it with her life, they made it her sister - Dawn.
To make her fit in properly, the monk created memories for Dawn. For Buffy. For Buffy's friends and mother. These memories still linger. Buffy was the first to learn of Dawn's origins, in the episode "No Place Like Home." A dying monk revealed what I've just revealed to you. Buffy chose to tell only one other soul - not Dawn, not Joyce, but Giles. The secret remained between faux father and faux daughter until real mother starting putting two and two together. Finally, Buffy let her friends know about Dawn's nature in "Blood Ties."
"What am I? Am I real? Am I anything?"
And then so did Dawn. It's been said that you should never write down what you don't want someone else reading. Giles had put what he knew about Glory, the Key, and everything related to either of them in what we presume was a volume of his Watcher Diaries. By hiding it while Dawn was in the shop, she of course knew something had to be in there. After more "they're talking about me" paranoia set in Dawn at Buffy's party, she blew up at them all and snuck out of the house to steal the notes. Spike tagged along, and between the two reading aloud from Giles' journal, the truth came out. It was as if she'd broken into her family's safe deposit box and stumbled upon her birth certificate. Dawn learned what she was.
She also learned what she wasn't - She wasn't a Summers, not by blood.
Not to mention the issue of cutting...
"Why didn't you tell me?" - Dawn
Chills run down the spine. If that isn't frighteningly akin to an adoption revelation, I don't know what is.
"You don't know that. You don't know anything. I'm-I'm just a Key, right? Everything about me's made up."
She's not a part of their family. Not Buffy's sister. Not Joyce's daughter. They knew she was 'adopted' and never told her. Though, unlike a lifelong adoption, they honestly remember and 'feel' like she's been alive 14 years, whereas she's been there six months, and they've only known the truth for even less time than that.
She's become yet another in a long line of little girls lost on BtVS, questioning her past, her future, her destiny, her reality. For half of her life, since she was seven, she had kept her every thought in her diaries. But now all of those memories, events, thoughts and words have become false.
"Where did I come from? Who made me? What-what am I?"
Dawn is like a foster child wondering who her real parents are. Where they are. Where she used to live. Why she was given away. If only my favorite monk - shall we say, the closest thing Dawn has to an uncle - was still alive to tell us.
"Are you okay? Did she hurt you?" - Buffy
It is here that adoption changes to acceptance, and blood sisters are born. Buffy touches Dawn's wound on her arm and continues,
"It's blood. It's Summers blood." Buffy touches her own wound, putting her blood on her hand, then grabs Dawn's hand and mixing their blood. "It's just like mine. Doesn't matter where you came from, or-or how you got here. You are my sister. There's no way you could annoy me so much if you weren't."
It is true that you cannot pick who you are related to genetically, technically, however you wish to say it. However, when all is said and done, family is what you make it - and you can make your own surrogate family. Let me end this with a quote from the novel Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn:
"What matters isn't whether something is real. What matters is if it is true."
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