Gibson was just waking up, still wearing his pjs, when Reyes handed him a glass of orange juice. "Thanks." He said, taking a deep gulp.

Reyes nodded, and gave him a searching look. She was better than Doggett at blocking her thoughts, so he couldn't really figure out what for. "Did you have any big plans for vacation?" She finally asked.

He shrugged, it was the first day of vacation so he hadn't given it a lot of thought yet. "I don't know, maybe read a little and rot my brain a lot by watching too much TV and too many movies."

"You wouldn't happen to know where your passport is, would you?" Reyes asked lightly.

"Sure, it's in my desk." He really wished she hadn't gotten so good at veiling her thoughts. They only slipped through now when she was excited about something, like finding out there was going to be twins, or worrying about Doggett.

"What would you say to taking a little trip to Mexico?"

Gibson raised an eyebrow, reminding her of Scully. "I'd say it beats the cold, but I'd wonder why you wanted to go."

"Well, I called my doctor, and he said I could fly up through the end of my seventh month, since twins aren't earlier than that too often. So right now is a good time to get away while I'm still smaller than a whale, and not looking after two screaming babies." She told him with a smile. "And to be honest, I'm hoping if I make an appearance at the agency that handled my adoption they'll tell me my parents names."

Gibson didn't really need the convincing. "Can I drive us to the airport when we leave?" Doggett didn't let him drive much, even though he'd had his license for months.

Reyes gave him a hug. "If you help me pack."

"Deal!" He exclaimed. "But... if I need help shutting the suitcases, maybe you can sit on them. You're heavy enough now." He added with a grin.

"Hey!"

The sun was shining brightly when the sleeping agents and pseudo-scientist finally woke up. They'd slept until mid-afternoon, which wasn't unexpected, given they were out in that field until sunrise. After a lot of stretching and yawning, they gathered for yet another meal of just-add-water pancakes and coffee. Even Scully had some, because she felt like she could us something with more kick than tea.

"So now what happens?" Doggett asked, voicing the question all three agents had.

Barry shrugged. "I can't believe we didn't see anything." If he'd been ten his pout would have been cute, but with his terrible facial hair it wasn't endearing to any of them.

"Maybe it's over." Mulder said brightly. "Maybe whatever it was only felt the need to kill a few cows, and is now going to hibernate."

"You think it has a taste for liver?" Scully teased, and the joke went over the other two men's heads. She knew Barry wouldn't know what she meant, but she was beginning to wonder what Doggett had meant when he claimed to have "read" all the x-files. Briefly skimmed?

A knock on the door interrupted their sleepy attempts at conversation. Barry was the closest to the door, so he went to get it. The sheriff looked sour as he entered the cabin. "We've got another dead cow. I thought you feds were supposed to be here to put an end to this crap."

"No sir, you were misinformed. We're here to keep out thumbs up our butts." Mulder said flatly. "We went where Barry told us the creature was going to attack. He's the one with the knowledge of the situation, so we trusted his judgment since he'd done the research on where it was going to strike."

The small man squirmed under Mulder and the sheriff's scrutiny. "I guessed wrong." He said defensively.

"Guessed?" Scully asked, glaring at him. "What do you mean 'guessed'?"

He continued to look like he wanted to flee. "It hadn't been to that farm yet, so it seemed like a likely target."

"So basically you just thought of all the likely farms and picked one at random?" Doggett asked in disbelief.

To their surprise the sheriff spoke up. "There's been no rhyme or reason to the choice of farms. The perpetrator hasn't picked the biggest farms, or the most secluded, or the ones closest together. This is something that is impossible to profile-"He said while looking directly at Mulder, who suddenly got the impression that the good sheriff had looked into the agents backgrounds. "So what would you have done differently?"

Neither Scully or Doggett said anything, so Mulder answered him. "I don't think we would have done differently in the absence of a discernible pattern, except perhaps to ask for police assistance so we could split up and watch two possible locations at once."

"Why would we have needed police back up for that? There are four of us, that'd of been two pairs of two." Barry said, apparently looking past the fact that they might have done just that if he had been up front with them.

"Because you're not an agent or a cop." Doggett said bluntly. "Only one armed person isn't adequate."

Barry muttered something under his breath about having a gun permit.

Before the bickering continued, Scully sighed. "Mulder, why don't you and Doggett take Barry to the latest farm that was hit and looked for evidence? I've got another dead cow to look at."

"Do you want a ride?" The sheriff asked Scully grudgingly.

Since she was past worrying about inconveniencing the prickly law enforcement agent, she took him up on the offer. Doggett and Barry were already at it again before she and the sheriff were out of hearing. It made her glad that Mulder would be with them to mediate.

The sheriff dropped Scully back off at the cabin around seven. The boys had beat her back, and since none of them appeared to have a scratch, the arguments must not have lead to blows. The thought of them fist fighting over bigfoot amused her.

It seemed as though they'd even been semi-productive while she was gone. Mulder and Barry were looking over the "evidence" they'd gathered at the farm and chatting excitedly about what they'd found. Doggett was pointedly ignoring them, and seemed to be writing field-notes on a yellow notepad.

Noticing Scully, Mulder waved a ziplock baggie of what looked like fur. " Look, Scully," He called to her as she walked in. "We need to send this to the lab to be analyzed right away."

"Maybe then they'll finally believe it's bear fur." Doggett sighed.

"The bear would have huge feet." Barry retorted, studying what looked like the plaster cast of a foot print. A very big foot print.

"A fake foot." Doggett snorted derisively. "You can buy fake feet to make fake foot prints, you know."

"Don't I know it." Scully said under he breath, thinking of the case She and Mulder had been working on when she'd lost her poor little dog. A teenager had used fake feet to make prints to impress a girl at school.

"Scully, you did more work than any of us today." Mulder told her in a placating tone. Why don't you relax with a book or something for a while?"

She gave him a suspicious look. "What will you be doing?"

He looked slightly guilty. "I was thinking of driving down to the Fed-Ex place I noticed on our way up here."

"Can't it wait until the male man comes tomorrow?" She asked, exasperated.

He shook his head with an eager pleading look on his face. "I think it's important to get this to the labs as soon as possible." He glanced at Doggett. "Plus I was thinking that Doggett should come too, so he can call Reyes and let her know it's going to be at least another week until we get home. I'll call Maggie too, of course, but I really think in Monica's state- "

"Fine, whatever. Just get back as soon as you can." Scully huffed, stalking out of the room. A couple of minutes later, she heard Doggett and Mulder leave, so she didn't expect any interruptions when she pulled out the novel she'd thought to bring along with her.

Which is why she was surprised when Barry shyly came to her room a little while later. "Mulder and Doggett left?" She asked, when he made no move to speak.

"Yeah...Is agent Doggett ok? He seems really anxious about his wife, and Mulder said she's in some sort of state... is she sick?"

Scully shook her head. "No, she's just pregnant. They're expecting twins some time this summer."

"Oh, wow, that's enough to make a guy anxious about being away." Barry affirmed."But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. You said you had pictures of your kids, would now be a bad time to look at them?"

She smiled wanly. She didn't think he remembered. "Sure, they're in my purse."

Fishing through it, she finally unearthed the photo she and Mulder had had taken a couple of months earlier. "My daughter Emily, who's eight, and William, who'll be soon." She told him as she passed the photo over.

Barry grinned when he saw it "They look like you. Except for the little girl being a blonde."

"I wonder if it might darken when she gets older. With my red hair and her dad's dark hair, blond is a little surprising." She admitted.

He nodded. "But it probably wouldn't get as dark as Mulder's anyway, would it?"

She blinked once, forgetting for a moment that most people probably did think that Mulder was her daughter's father. Spender didn't object to that, so they let people think what they wanted. "Probably not."

"They must miss you." Barry commented.

"I'm sure I miss them more." Scully declared. "We'll be done with this case before William's birthday next month, that's the important thing."

She expected Barry to agree with her, but he looked more than a little doubtful. Recalling Kersh's order that they stay on the case until it was solved suddenly made her very sad.