The story "Abyss Looks Back" explores the dark road of abuse and how a profiler deals with it. The profiler in this case of course is Mulder and the insuing guilt trip was to be expected. The only difference this time around is that Mulder gets support from more than one person.
Even though this piece is a very intense one in regards of the psychological angle of Mulder's character, it also is somewhat repetetive in regards of the character's relationships to each other. The well known situation between Mulder and Scully is also part of it, as well as the newly growing affection of one AD to Mulder, which is already known to the FanFiction community. However, this piece mostly deals with the case of a missing child and the possible results if the team is not able to find the location of where the child is. A good point of the author here is that even though Mulder is brought to the attention as the outsider to the team (As is the usual way to introduce him), he also plays in the team. This time around he actually gets the respect of his fellow agents for his actions and also because Mulder is somewhat nice to them as well and is part of the team and in the end is not some outsider who calls the shots. Of course he is also calling the shots by the way, but he also learns his limits and those of his body, which in turn is one way to make Mulder into a more human being than he usually is.
Overall, the story is very convincing, mostly because the characters are actually developing throughout the storyline. However, the way the storyline itself goes takes a lot of leaps, just like Mulder does so often. Thus the reader is not only once presented with a solution to one of the problems the team faces without quite knowing where it was coming from. However, the explanation of Mulder taking a leap of faith only works so often. In this story however, it is used one or two times too often, which in turn leaves the reader hanging with an uneasy feeling.
