All of her friends need help but often it's John who needs it most. After catching the tiger sometimes he forgets to do things, forgets to walk, he needs someone to tie him down a bit and anchor him. Rose does the dishes with him as a way to help him cope with everything that happened during sbrub.
He’d feel bad about it if it weren’t for the fact that she clearly needs this too. Needs to pretend that there is normalcy left still obtainable here in the wreckage of the aftermath. Needs to help them because she needs to feel needed, she HAS to feel like there is something only she can provide, something meaningful and worthwhile that she, Rose, can bring to the table. That she isn’t just a pawn in the Game, that she is not an interchangeable cog in the machinery of the universe. So he gives his shaking hands to her to hold, to anchor him, to keep him from becoming more wind than boy, because he trusts her and he needs this too. Needs her to pry his thoughts down from the clouds and submerge his hands in water, needs her to come to him when she is dark and lost and desperate because he needs to help her too. Her thoughts twist ugly, sometimes, and it’s okay because his do too, and they both revisit far too often the blood and the wine and the checkerboard tower. Rose needs to know that she is more than the drunken shadow of a woman she never reached closure with, just as much as John needs to remember that he is loved, and valued, and that there is a girl who would capsize two universes into a giant green ball of flame for him, for them, for all of them. Their fingers bare callouses from needles and hammers and bedsheets gripped too tight, too often. Their eyes are not special for their coloration alone. And maybe it’s a broken way of thinking, but it’s nice to feel needed, to go to his house and see him in shambles for her to pick back up, to open the door and see someone who just needs to feel necessary. The balance isn’t a “good” one, but it is one they’re grateful for none the less.