She always gives him his space and watches over him from a distance- it’s not really a ‘Hinata’ thing where she’s too shy to approach; in fact when she talks to him, she does it just fine. Rather, it looks like she is the only one who seems to understand Jack’s need for his own space and his own time and how restricted he is by the expectations and admiration the town has for him as well as the need to rest from that. It also makes perfect sense that she would understand how someone hovering over you all the goddamn time easily gets exhausting. She gives Jack one of the biggest expressions of care she knows how- that freedom she is never granted.
The expressions on her whenever she sees him. It’s not full-out swoon but she does seem to like, enter a happy place immediately.
She hears his lament and muses to herself that she knows that feeling- here I’m sure everyone interprets it differently, but I feel like she means the lack of a choice, the literal and metaphorical imprisonment that both their lives carry for them.
I’m sure someone else has ranted about how she brings him food when he’s locked away in his tower, here goes my two cents on that:
First off, there’s this little moment before she leaps through the window and down onto the street, where she just sets her eyes on Jack’s window and sort of steadies herself before the jump, after looking down in fright at how high it is. She HAS TO do this, though. She can’t stay locked in forever. Jack is like a reminder to her of WHY she wants to go out and try when it would be ‘Easier’ to just stay put and obey.
As far as we can infer, Sally was pretty much made to be a ‘Housekeeping wife’ both in the sense where she’s there too cook, clean and care for the spouse and that she’s to be kept at the house at all times. (Honestly the way Finkelstein treats her screams ‘GROOMING’ to me.) and she seems to be somewhat OK with the concept as long as she’s granted the freedom to roam a bit. (’I don’t want to be patient’ scene really sells me on the idea that Sally isn’t really trying to escape from him forever, just sort of- have a ball before she’s stuck for good while simultaneously trying for him to see things her way, which he just doesn’t because it’s not input that he wants from her.) However, it’s something she accepts as a duty, as opposed to when she cooks for Jack, which she seems to do out of concern and simply because she wants to.
(This may also hint to her being the first one to notice just how fixated on christmas Jack really was and being the first one to realize the next logical step was him working non-stop. And at first she isn’t concerned- once more, she is giving him that space, she is giving him the ease to not have to worry about food because she’s already provided it. It’s only after her premonition that she starts being REALLY concerned and mostly because of the certainty that what he’s doing is going to lead to a terrible end.)
She is so NOT on board with the idea of taking over christmas that it’s not even funny. BUT, she still supports him. It would have been so easy to make her the ‘Nag’ so to say, just have her be the one person to completely refuse the idea- but Sally also seems to understand there being some value to letting people make their own mistakes and just be there for them instead of trying to control them.
(Adding on to this and I’m p sure this is half-headcanon, but: she never loses hope that Jack will realize how bad an idea it is himself if given time- after all, there was always the chance, after she conjured up a fog, that he simply chose to do the same thing the next year, but I think Sally just knew as soon as he was able to come down from the excitement of the idea, he’d see how it wasn’t a good one.)
When she realizes Jack is in danger because of what he’s doing, her first move is to get the one person who can get things back on track- there’s two possibilities here: It’s unclear to me whether she knew that he was at Oogie’s from the start or she just sort of went to the treehouse, heard Oogie boasting about eating a ‘Fat man’ and realized what was going on. Either way, going down there to save him by herself required guts. It’s a bit cheaty here, because OF COURSE she wasn’t gonna allow Oogie eat Santa, even if Jack’s life hasn’t depended on it. Halloween Town citizens are terrifying but not mean.
After all is well, though, she once again gives him his space. It’s Jack who willingly breaches it, and the (this time spoken) language of his song matches what Sally has been doing all along ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to join you by your side…’ he returns that feeling of not wanting to stifle or overwhelm ‘Where we can gaze upon the stars and sit together…’ that need for silence and the absence of expectations or demands. That inherent value in just the presence of a loyal companion.
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