Jareth found her in the kitchen, doing dishes, at ten at night. She couldn't say she hadn't been expecting him awake; the bottle of painkillers had stood untouched on the nightstand since he regained enough coherency to make his own decisions (she suspected they'd never worked at all,) and she knew he didn't sleep well, or often. Even so she had figured him upstairs, reading (or pretending to read, the book on his knee held open by a lifeless hand,) resigned to another long night, not…down here, hovering hesitantly in the doorway, oddly shy and painfully insubstantial in Andrew's baggy Batman pajamas.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing, and went back to the dishes. She had made cookies with Jo; a veritable mountain of dirty dishes occupied the counter to the left of the sink. Whatever Jareth wanted, he could damn well speak up about it.
The running water very nearly drowned it out, when he did. Irritably, she shut off the faucet.
"What was that?"
"I asked if life is always this bewildering," he repeated, quietly and with the strained calm if profound tiredness.
Sarah nodded thoughtfully as she scrubbed the baked-on cheese of the last few days' dinner from Karen's old casserole. She listened under the water's murmur for the thud of a rubber-tipped cane or the creak of a floorboard; any indication that he'd vacated the doorway. She finished the casserole and put it in the right-hand sink with the other dishes to be rinsed; amazing, how many dishes three people who cooked as little as possible could produce. She picked up a cookie sheet to scrub and then, because apparently it needed saying, she said,
"Yes."
Perhaps there came a quiet sound o acknowledgement, or pain. After a moment, the floorboard did creak, but, to her surprise, not in retreat. She half-listened around the noise of her scouring pad as he crossed the kitchen, laboriously careful with one stockinged foot and a walking stick on the slick tile floor, to stand beside her. Her elbow almost hit him as she placed the cookie sheet atop the casserole.
Except that she didn't put it there at all, because he took it. She boggled at him as surprise overwhelmed her brief annoyance at having him in her personal space. She stared as he rinsed it, considered the bare counter beside the sink, put it back on the casserole, one-handedly retrieved and spread a hand towel, re-rinsed the sheet, put it on the towel, and moved on to take care of the casserole.
Right about then her brain caught up and she returned to washing dishes. It didn't take long for the oddity of having someone to pass them to to wear off. She'd done the same with Karen, Erin and Andrew, and commenced teaching Jo. It just startled her, every time, to see Jareth instead of any of them, from the corner of her eye; to catch herself on the verge of making a joke only Erin would get, or hearkening back to an argument with Karen so old that it had become ritual.
Every now and again, she stole a glance at him. He worked steadily. She pretended not to notice how his hand shook, sometimes; nor did she watch his hand much at all. There is little to be read in a damp leather gardening glove.
In fact, she said nothing to him at all, save to request he dry and put away the glass mixing bowl, rather than leave it out to dry. She saw some battle waged in his expression, some maelstrom to which she could put no name. The least she could do was to leave him his pride, and give him a burner to dry when that pride threatened to crumple. He took the burner, the thick leather glove making him clumsy even as it protected him from the iron, and dried it meticulously. By the time he finished, his shoulders had squared again.
When she passed him the last dish and offered an encouraging smile, she could tell he tried to return the gesture. It came out far too sad. By then, the battle had ended, whatever it had been, and left in its wake a bleak calm. She almost hugged him, but remembered that stubborn pride and instead offered, quietly as the hour demanded,
"Thank you. Get some rest, okay?"
"You as well, Sarah."
His hand lifted a little, as if to touch hers; she began to reach out, in solidarity or reassurance, then thought better of it, shook herself, and went upstairs, while he let his hand drop. The thick leather almost let her pretend she had not seen his thin fingers curl in on themselves. This was Jareth, not Erin or Andrew or Jo. Not like them. Not human. Not even an affectionate, accessible non-human like her friends, or any of the goblins.
That night, she dreamed again of Erin.