That was what Sarah had needed, the grounding in sanity that was Peter, for who he was and who he was to her, though it was helpfully aided by the calm woven into each brush of his fingers, each squeeze of his hands. To listen and believe anything of this was to fall into insanity, but the sane? The sane clearly laughed.
She couldn't manage laughter yet, but she could manage love and gratitude. Being gifted the story had offended her, when she had realized what Jareth clearly meant by it, and though she had shrugged it off with self-directed scolding, Peter's reassurance that those were the last things she could be was welcome and appreciated. She reached out for him, part of her foolishly waiting for Jareth's exit.
It didn't come.
Jareth's entry into the kitchen, essentially pinning them in the space with him unless Peter teleported them out, was another fan to the side-by-side fear and anger, but it was being countered by the gentle waves of energy coming off Peter. She wanted to tell him the last thing he needed to be doing was expending so much energy calming her down, but she couldn't deny the aid was helping. In fact, it was helping enough that anyone paying attention to her would notice that she was slowly edging her way along the counter to put herself between Jareth and Peter as Jareth started to explain what his motivations and reasoning had been. Afraid or not, she wasn't going to let Jareth do anything – harm, attempt to kidnap, anything else – to Peter. She just wasn't.
She hadn't looked at Jareth yet, other than to know where he was in her peripheral vision, and that seemed wise for the moment. "Common?" she questioned, eyes still locked on Peter despite the fact she was addressing Jareth. "There's nothing common about my life. The people I care about, the people I love – they all bring the extraordinary into my life every day in a hundred big and small ways. And I love every part of it. I don't want a kingdom, I don't want a king in a castle." For a brief moment, Sarah somehow found a smile in all of this. "I have a knight in a hotel. That's what I want."
That said, she was tired of being treated like an incompetent who had no idea about her own heart or mind, and so she finally turned and faced Jareth. "And I don't care what you want," she said, the words sounding careful as she attempted to keep her tone as calm as she could. "And you don't really care what I want, otherwise you wouldn't be here. There's nothing you can do that's ever going to change the fact I know that the life I have is the life I want for my future, and you aren't in it."