[He lets the silence run out, pulls more of the pieces of himself together in the meantime. They've been drifting apart again, like ice sloughing off into water. Smaller and smaller and harder to find and retrieve. He doesn't need all of them, but he does need a handful for tonight, to make it through to tomorrow.]

... I think it would be better if I stepped back from it.

[It's said quietly, but steadily, something he's been thinking for a while. Something, if he's to be honest, he'd been thinking about since the end of the first week. This week... it's enough. He's done enough, to the point where he doesn't know where he's going anymore, plowing blindly forward. It's going nowhere.]

I'll help find replacements.

[They'd be down at least half. Responsibility is a curse.]