Spoilers (ish) for STB, based on the recently released clip

When it comes down to it, there's not much to go through. Still, Spock is done well before he should be, a cursory glance through the boxes that she slowly unpacks.

"You can't just leave all that," she says when he rises from beside her, dust stirred up as he stands.

"We have other obligations," he says as if they didn't set aside today for this, carved the hours out of their schedule before even more years pass and nobody comes through here, a task put off for too long now.

"You'll want this someday," she says and gestures to the piles she's made around herself, stacks of all that he has left of the life his mother lived.

"It is not necessary to bring and therefore illogical to continue to keep."

"But her books?"

"There is only so much allotment for personal items on board."

"And-" Nyota picks up an old mug, the rim chipped and a crack through the handle. Likely why it was left behind when Amanda moved away from Earth, a battered mug regulated to a box and that box left in a mostly empty storage unit. "Don't you want this?"

"It is not usable."

"Did she make this?"

"The ship is climate controlled," Spock says, not quite looking at the blanket Nyota picks up. "It is not needed."

She works her finger into where the weave has come loose. A long ago mistake, the yarn not pulled tight enough. "Is your father coming?"

Spock at least pauses before answering. "He is otherwise occupied."

"Did you call him?"

"Is it necessary to keep past employment records?" Spock asks as if he hasn't already sorted through the box in front of him. Apparently it's not because he just sets aside the stack of filmplasts. She's sure he barely read them, not that it's strictly all that important, but still. There's efficiency with going through the stack of boxes, and then there's sidestepping the whole process.

"You said you were going to call him."

"The negotiation with the Federation Council is currently underway. He is unavailable."

"He's on Earth, though." To say goodbye to them, not that he or Spock will admit that, but there's lunch together tomorrow, and one more dinner after that before they leave. And there would have been today too, a handful more hours to see him before they're gone. "He might want some say in this."

"He does not."

In the doorway, Spock waits empty handed. She picks at the blanket again, her finger working deeper. She has a similar pile of things in her old room at her parent's house, left behind time and again, visit after visit when still nothing is worth taking with her. If she could remember what's there, it's probably half of the same things, pictures she's long forgotten the subject of, clothes she won't wear, jewelry she once liked and now doesn't want, a matching handful of mismatched earrings and tangled necklaces that Amanda long ago didn't pack for her life on Vulcan.

But she has sisters who comb through her things regularly, a niece who sleeps in that room when she visits, her mother and father to prop the door open and keep the air fresh, none of the staleness of a never visited storage unit, dust laid thick and even across every surface.

"Well, I do," she says.

"It is yours, then," he says evenly but he doesn't touch the box she picks up, not when she carries it back with them, and not later when she sets it on the floor of their new quarters next to their bags, their new uniforms, their new everything, the ship rebuilt and refurnished and recommissioned, ready for the mission ahead of them.

…

Whatever crack was in the handle of the mug extends throughout it, a spiderweb of fractures that drips hot tea over Nyota's hands. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and goes to find Scotty with it still stinging, a hard throb of leftover heat that sears across her skin.

"Can you fix this?" she asks.

"First repair of the mission," he says and within moments it's back in her hands, a fine filament of adhesive filling each crevice. "Let that sit, now. It'll take a bit to dry."

She sets it with Spock's comm and padd since he won't touch it for weeks, if ever. It'll likely just gather dust again, or maybe he'll move it to some conveniently logical spot that's completely out of sight, but for now it looks nice there, old and weathered against the pristine lines of their rooms.

…

"What're you reading?"

"It's-" She holds the cover up so that Jim can squint at it. "It's pretty good."

"Huh. Never heard of it."

"It's out of print." She had checked, thinking she should get another copy to read rather than crack open the peeling binding, but she hadn't even been able to find a copy in Starfleet's database, the hundreds of novels archived there not reaching as far back as Amanda's tastes had apparently stretched.

"You finished this one?" he asks, holding up another, thinner one, the pages yellow and stiff when he flicks through them.

"Not yet."

Jim drops down to sit next to her. "Well, we gotta pace ourselves. Only five years to go."

Spock walks in on them like that, her and Jim on opposite ends of the couch Nyota specifically requested, the only sound the rustle of pages. Feet up on the sofa is illogical and unsanitary, but Spock doesn't say anything, since to do so he'd have to look in their direction and neither of them have set down their books.

…

"I knew there was a reason the irrigation was off."

"Oh." Elbow deep in the bucket, Nyota stills. "I'm sorry."

"It's no problem, but the Cappelean roses are getting a bit dry."

"There's no other buckets on the ship," she says because she checked and the ensigns in Engineering had sent her to the geology labs where a Lieutenant bent over a spectrometer had sent her to Sickbay where Chapel had shrugged and suggested the gardens. "Here, let me-"

The soap on her hands doesn't help with grabbing the hose on the ground next to her, but Sulu just waves her off.

"They can wait a bit. You know there's a laundry service on board, right?"

"Funny." She pushes her sleeves back again even though they were soaked long ago, the cuffs heavy and dripping nearly as soon as she started. "They only do synthetics, this is wool."

"Really?" Sulu kneels down next to her, peers into the soapy murk. "Like from a sheep?"

She nods, since that's what Spock's tricorder had said, beeping its results at her as he stared at his padd, the solid, long line of his back to her.

"It's dirty. Or was." Grimy and gritty feeling once she had shaken it out, dust flying in a wide swath that hung in the air. By now it has been scrubbed out by the environmental controls, whatever particles Amanda folded into the blanket so long ago cleaned and recycled and likely spit out into the vacuum of space.

"You can use the lights in the seedling room to dry it." Sulu brushes his knees up with the flat of his palms when he stands. "And it's plenty warm in there."

She arranges it carefully on a empty table. Spread out like that, there's more than the one mistake she had found, a host of holes scattered over the blanket, and spots where the weave is pulled too tight. A distraction, maybe, while Amanda knit it, a comm call or the good part of a movie, her attention on that and not how her hands were working.

Later, folded on the end of their bed she can't see those mistakes as well, and Spock can't see them at all since he won't look at it. He's always too cold though, and even though she waits for it, he never moves the blanket and it stays a heavy weight over their feet each night when they sleep.

…

"Spock's getting you jewelry?" McCoy asks from behind her. "I thought I'd never see the day."

"Something like that." She rubs at the bridge of her nose and then digs her forefinger and thumb into her eyes so that she doesn't have to look down at the chain laid out on the table. It's ridiculous and she knows that, repeats it to herself each and every attempt she makes to work the tangle out. But every time she sets it aside as a lost cause she ends up picking it up again, the chain still knotted no matter how she picks at it.

He takes a long sip of his coffee. At her elbow is her own breakfast, forgotten now in favor of the necklace before her.

"It's pretty."

"It was his mom's."

Turns out all she needed was a surgeon's hands, because McCoy holds the knot up to the light for a moment and then bends over it. When he's done, he lays the chain out in front of her, the pendant a cheerful gleam in the bright white of the mess hall.

That night when she tries it on, it sits lower than it had before it was fixed, resting well below the stiff collar of her uniform when she tucks it there. She pulls it out again, working the stone against her fingers. There might have been matching earrings once, or a bracelet, ones that were lost long ago, or given away to a friend, or taken with her when Amanda moved, set on a dresser or in a jewelry box in their house on Vulcan.

"Did you ever see her wear this?" she asks Spock, who clear across the room is buried in his padd.

"No."

"Is it ok if I do?"

"It is yours to do with as you wish," he says, even and cool and as if he doesn't care at all, though in the mirror he's watching her, his eyes tracking the motion of her hands as she adjusts the chain. And then, "It is not regulation."

She lifts her shoulder to her ear. "I'm not on duty."

She is the next morning and the morning after that but she still doesn't take it off, the chain by then warmed through and the weight of it comforting, a quiet reminder that she can reach up and touch throughout her day.