Buffy is searching around neighbourhoods, in search of the Trio. Warren berates Jonathan for not watching the monitors more carefully when suddenly they all spot Buffy on the monitors, she's close to their house. Andrew has a plan and blows heavily into a large African tree branch. Outside, a hairless, slimy demon appears and attacks Buffy, throwing her into a car until she finally regains the upperhand and beats him down with a garbage can. Unfortunately he stabs her with a large talon of his and suddenly Buffy is in the hospital, being restrained by two nurses who inject her with some sort of serum. Buffy wakes up some time later, in the same alley she was fighting the demon. But the demon is nowhere to be found and she's slightly confused.
The next day Willow talks to herself while at Sunnydale U, pretending that she's addressing Tara. She spots Tara in the crowd and is about to say hello to her when she sees Tara kiss another girl on the cheek. Hurt, Willow walks away quickly, as Tara watches her leave sadly. Buffy is at the Doublemeat Palace where her supervisor is berating her for acting like a space cadet when Buffy suddenly has a flash and she's back in the hospital again. When she gets home, she talks to Willow, who tells her that Tara appears to be seeing someone else, sort of. Buffy assures her that it must have been nothing. Xander enters the Summers' home where the two girls are overjoyed to see him. He wants to know where Anya is, but they don't know, only that she left a couple days ago, with some of her stuff. Xander still wants to be with Anya, which surprises both Buffy and Willow, because he deserted Anya at the altar.
Spike is out much later that night, getting his groceries, when he runs in to Buffy on the way home. He asks about the wedding but Buffy is forced to tell him that it didn't happen in the end. Spike is surprised by this, as he never expected it to happen this way. Willow and Xander show and immediately Spike angers Xander by insulting him on his departure at the wedding. While they argue Buffy suddenly falls to her knees and once she looks up she's back in the hospital again, looking up at a doctor who's asking her where she is. Her reply of Sunnydale is wrong according to the doctor, who tells her she's been in this hospital for 6 years. Her parents are brought into the room and Buffy is heartbroken and in disbelief that her mother is right there in front of her eyes. The vision fades and Buffy comes back to Sunnydale where Xander and Willow take her home. Buffy then tells them that she's been having these flashes ever since she fought that slimy demon while hunting for the Trio. Her flashes have always been of her in an institution, with doctors telling her that Sunnydale doesn't exist. It felt ever so real to her and she's still in shock about it... when she suddenly reverts into the institution again where her parents are talking to the doctor again. He explains that they may be able to bring Buffy back from her delusions of grandeur (her being the Slayer).
Meanwhile Warren and Andrew return to the lair where Jonathan is feeling totally out of the loop because they won't discuss with him what they're doing. Jonathan tries to leave, but Warren won't let him, trying to convince him that they need to stick together. At home, Buffy stares longingly at a picture of herself with her father and mother and her when she was a child. Willow discovers the type of demon that stabbed Buffy, but the news doesn't seem to make Buffy any happier, even though the demon carries the antidote to the poison that was injected in Buffy. Buffy opens up to Willow and tells her that she can't figure out why she can't snap out of this, even before the demon's venom was inside her. She tells Willow that when she first became the Slayer, she freaked out, and told her parents. They thought she was insane and sent her to an institution for a couple months. They only let her leave the place once she stopped talking about vampires. Buffy's terrified that she's still in that clinic.
Spike and Xander are out hunting the demon down when it suddenly jumps out at them. Spike attacks it while Xander shoots it with the tranquilizer gun. Dawn brings Buffy some tea and Buffy tells her that they need to try harder to make things better, when she's suddenly thrown back into the clinic again. There she tries to explain that Dawn was originally a ball of energy, but that only makes her parents think she's even crazier. She flips back to Sunnydale and Dawn storms off, angry about Buffy's behaviour. Xander and Spike bring the demon to Buffy's basement where Willow stabs him with a sharp object, causing the demon to eject it's sharp poker. Willow snaps it off and brews a potion to heal Buffy. She brings it up to her and tells her to drink it. Willow leaves as Spike walks in and Buffy tells him to leave, because he's not a part of her life. Angry, he tells her that he's figured it out, that she's addicted to misery, that's why she never tells her friends about her fling with him. He threatens to tell her friends if she doesn't do it herself. He leaves and she pours out the potion into her garbage can. She snaps back into the institution where she tells her parents and the doctor that she wants to be healthy again. The doctor tells her that she needs to release her mind of her friends in Sunnydale, and that whatever it takes to do so, she must do it. Xander comes back to the Summers' house after having showered from the ickiness he got covered in from the demon. He finds Buffy in the kitchen and she bashes him over the forehead with a frying pan, and knocks him out cold. She throws him into the basement where Willow is being kept down there, bound and gagged. Buffy finds Dawn in her room and tells her she needs to go in the basement with the others. Dawn tries to run but Buffy catches her, muttering all the while that her Sunnydale world isn't even believable. She traps them all in the basement while the doctor in the institution urges her on. She releases the demon in the basement, while her friends are left helpless. Tara arrives at the house and enters the basement. Seeing the problem she releases Willow and Dawn's bonds with a few short words. And then magically throws shelving at the demon, buying them some time. Willow begins to wail on the demon with a baseball bat. In the institution, Buffy becomes terrified for her friends while her mother tries to convince her that her friends aren't real and that she has believe in herself. Realization hits Buffy, and she tells her mother that she's right. She says "goodbye" and then disappears back in to the world of Sunnydale and lets loose on the demon, throwing him mercilessly around the basement until she finally kills him. Buffy apologizes profusely to her friends, and Willow prepares another potion for her. Meanwhile, in the institution, Buffy's parents weep as the doctor flashes a light in a comatose Buffy's eyes, getting absolutely no reaction out of her.
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