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If her friends didn't stop tiptoeing around the subject of family, she was going to scream. She knew they were just concerned about her, she'd had a lot of loss in a relatively short time. But they didn't seem to understand that just because it was the first Christmas since her father's death, it didn't make things harder. Actually, it made her a bit nostalgic, remembering all the other holidays her father had missed over the years because of the demands of duty. The only real difference between this year and all of those other years was that there was no possibility that there'd be a phone call from him.
Glad as she was that Gen. O'Neill never changed, that didn't make her any less suspicious of his gift for her. She'd been in the field with him too often not to recognize his "ready to run for the gate at the first sign of trouble" posture every time he looked at her during the party. The fact that the gift was a single, large envelope only made her more uneasy, because she could come up with too many scenarios for what that envelope could contain.
The SGC holiday party had wound down a bit, leaving mostly the high-ranked and the old hands. Not everyone exchanged gifts, but there was a respectable pile under the tree in the corner of the conference room. Sam carefully opened the enveloped, extracting several papers of different types. There was a folded star chart on thin drawing paper with a particular star highlighted. At a glance, Sam placed it near (astrologically speaking) the system where the freed Jaffa had settled. Under that was a glossy photo of a binary star, with both the primary and companion shining bright enough that she couldn't tell which was which. The final paper was heavier parchment, and it took her a moment to completely grasp the meaning of it. The certificate was from the Global Star Registry, certifying that the two component stars of this binary star had been officially registered with the United States copyright office as "Jacob" and "Bra'tac". The fine print was suddenly too blurry for her to tell which name went to which star, but the details didn't matter.
Sam didn't care about how Gen. Landry would interpret it, she didn't even care about what Daniel would think as she launched herself at Jack, pulling him into a tight hug. "Thank you, Sir," she whispered tearily. The awkward way Jack put his arms around her and patted her back brought a watery chuckle out of her. She'd given up on any possibility of them dating about the same time she noticed that the only realities in which they formed a romantic relationship were ones without Danny in the equation. But Jack had never known how to handle the remaining love of friends and sort-of siblings that had remained between them. And that was all right. Because they were still family, and family could fondly overlook that sort of thing. Because while he might not be able to handle his tough former second-in-command crying on his shoulder at a party, he'd gotten her a gift so thoughtful it had moved her to tears. Her father and her--it took a moment to find the word to define what Bra'tac was in relation to her and her father in the end--stepfather, together forever in the heavens.