[Erik lets out a breath, fingers tensing around his mug before he relaxes them. He's worked on this for a long time, but time and circumstances have changed around him. Now he has to remember what his purpose was, when even he wasn't entirely sure of it at the time.]

Moving forward. Because I hadn't been... for a long time. We hadn't been either. [At least it had felt that way to Erik, and he became all the more aware that he wasn't contributing. To whatever they were.] Everything felt stuck. So I decided to take a step.