High Wire

My name is Julien Moreau.

I spent twenty years walking wires for Cirque du Soleil. Headliner. Catch specialist. The guy you trusted to grab your wrist mid-air and not let go. I was born into the life, second-generation performer, raised on chalk dust and calluses. By the time I was ten, I could rig a harness blindfolded. By twenty-three, I was flying nightly under Vegas lights. They called me "the anchor." Not because I was heavy, but because I held everyone else in place.

It was supposed to be forever. The stage. The rhythm. Her.

Anca Vasile was my wife. Aerialist. Star. Force of nature. We built something up there together, acts, trust, a whole mythology. Until the trust cracked. And the mythology turned into a routine I didn't believe in anymore.

The day I saw her with someone else-

Chapter -- "Above It All"

(POV: Julien)

It was supposed to be a routine inspection. Final pass before curtain. I had done it a thousand times before. Boots on steel. Eyes up. Harness unclipped because I trusted my footing more than the rig. The catwalks ran like veins through the ceiling, and I moved through them with muscle memory. No spotlight. No audience. Just the creak of cable under tension and the faint scent of rosin and metal dust.

Halfway through, I saw them. Just movement at first. Two shapes beyond the spotlight spill. I thought it was a rigger and an aerialist rehearsing something last-minute. Happens all the time. But the moment I stepped quietly onto the upper platform and looked down, I saw the truth. It was Anca. My wife. Her hands on Léo's chest. His lips on hers. Their bodies pressed together like no one was watching.

They were twenty feet below, near the anchor point of the secondary lift line. Just close enough to be seen if you knew the angles. I didn't make a sound. Didn't grip the rail tighter. Didn't breathe too hard. Instead, I scanned the mounts. Checked the weight distribution. Logged the tension offset. I did my job. Even as the world tilted sideways beneath me, I clung to the process. One bolt. One wire. One breath at a time.

People think heartbreak makes noise. Glass shattering. Yelling. Thunder. But mine sounded like a rigging latch locking into place. Finality has a click. You either hear it or you don't. I did.

I climbed back down through the shadows, avoiding the spotlight spill. I passed within ten feet of them. They didn't even look up. Didn't even sense me. Maybe that was the part that hurt the most. How easy it was for her to forget I was part of this world. This stage. Like I had already been replaced. Both in the act and in her life.

Back in the workshop, I scrubbed the grease from my hands like it would take the betrayal off too. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just sat in silence for almost an hour. Then I logged my final clearance report and walked up to the producer's office with the transfer papers in hand.

Frank Delaney, showrunner and fixer of all mid-tier catastrophes, glanced up from his espresso and frowned. "Montreal?" he said, blinking. "You serious?"

"I don't joke on paperwork," I said.

"Is Anca going with you?"

I met his eyes for the first time. "No. Just me."

He hesitated, like he wanted to press. Maybe ask why. Maybe talk me down. But then he saw something in my face. Or didn't see something. Either way, he let it go.

"You'll be missed," he said finally.

"No, I won't," I replied, and walked out the door.

That night, I didn't pack everything. Just took what I needed. My tools. My name. And the part of me that hadn't completely broken yet. She could keep the spotlight. I would take the shadows. At least they were honest.

Somewhere high above, the rig held steady. Bolts locked. Lines taut. Everything in its place. Except me.

Back at the apartment, I laid my harness across the kitchen counter. Not folded. Not packed. Just draped over the cold tile like something recently removed from a body. The buckle was still warm from my hand. I didn't sit. I didn't turn on the lights.

I moved through the space slowly, pulling essentials from drawers and shelves. Tools. Gloves. The photo of my parents mid-flight, still clipped to the fridge with a rusting magnet. Every motion was deliberate. No panic. No pause.

By sunrise, my duffel was zipped and leaning against the door. I didn't bother with the rest. The furniture, the framed posters, the costume storage in the back closet they could stay. So could the silence.

I left while the city was still sleeping. Vegas always runs loud at night, but backstage in the early morning, it's quiet. Just the buzz of exit signs and the soft hum of rigging tension holding air where no one's flying. I didn't say goodbye. Didn't want to explain. Whatever I owed her, it had already been spent.

My locker was still plastered with years of stickers and old cue sheets. I emptied it in under five minutes. I kept the essentials. Tools. Gloves. The small photo of my parents in mid-flight, caught decades ago between two arcs of a swing. I stared at that photo longer than I should have.

I walked the perimeter of the stage one last time. Not for nostalgia. For closure. I touched the support cables, checked the knot points, passed the spot where I used to stand before every act. It didn't feel like leaving home. It felt like walking away from the wreckage of one.

I submitted the transfer request the night before, routed it directly through internal channels to Montreal HQ. They approved it within twelve hours. No questions asked. I had seniority and a clean record. Nobody cared why I was leaving, just that I signed off on all safety clearances.

What they didn't know was that every one of those sign-offs had been done with a lump in my throat. Every time I tightened a bolt or tested a line, I did it wondering how long she had been slipping away while I was keeping everything else in the air.

Later that morning, I passed Frank Delaney again. He caught me just outside the loading bay, dragging my duffel.

"You're really doing this," he said, arms crossed, voice low.

"I am."

"You two have been the anchor here for a decade."

"Not anymore."

"You want me to tell her?"

I didn't answer. Just kept walking. It would take her a few hours, maybe half a day to realize I was gone. That I'd left without drama. No fireworks. Just silence.

By nightfall, I was on a one-way flight to Montreal with a middle seat and a numb heart. I didn't even glance out the window. There was nothing left to see.

Back in Vegas, the city kept moving. Shows ran. Lights stayed lit. People clocked in and out like nothing had shifted overhead.

But somewhere, in a shared apartment above a quiet stretch of Industrial Road, a second set of keys sat untouched on the kitchen counter. A cup waited in the sink. A side of the bed remained cold.

"Has Anca even noticed yet?" I asked myself

**********

Chapter -- "The Vanishing Act"

(POV: Anca)

Julien didn't come home last night.

I noticed around two a.m., somewhere between my second shower and the end of whatever show I had playing in the background. His side of the bed was still untouched. No message. No text. At first, I assumed he was brooding again. Maybe another late-night inspection. He did that sometimes when the tension on the secondary rig line was off or when someone made a stupid cue call during warmups. I figured he was just walking it off.

But by morning, nothing had changed. Still no sign of him. No coffee brewed. No tools left by the door. Even the faint scent of resin he usually carried like cologne was gone.

I checked my phone. No missed calls. No message waiting. I tried calling. Straight to voicemail. He never turned off his phone. That wasn't like him.

I walked into wardrobe like I wasn't unraveling inside. Asked one of the riggers casually if they'd seen him. He blinked at me and said, "Didn't you hear? Julien's gone. Transferred out."

I laughed. Actually laughed. Thought he was joking. "Gone where?"

"Montreal," he said, lifting a coiled cord. "Left last night. HQ sent the clearance this morning."

I stared at him like he'd misread something. Julien wouldn't just leave. Not without saying anything. Not without telling me. We'd been through worse arguments than this silence. He had always come back.

He couldn't know. That had to be it. He didn't know about Léo. Maybe he was burnt out. Needed space. Or maybe it was about the family thing again. The conversation I kept dodging. The pressure he never stopped applying.

But this? This wasn't like him.

Julien was the type to hold everything inside until it broke him. He didn't shout. He didn't storm out. He swallowed things. I had counted on that.

So no, he couldn't know. If he had, he would've confronted me. Thrown a bottle. Slammed a door. Done something. But instead, he just vanished.

The only thing colder than the realization he was gone was the creeping suspicion that, for once, I might not be the one in control of the ending.

I waited.

A day. Then two.

The silence stretched, thin and sharp, like the wire we used to share. I told myself it was just a pause, a momentary gap before he came storming back through the door demanding an explanation. He always did.

But the door stayed closed. And so did he.

I called him three times the next day. Once in the morning. Once in the afternoon. Once just before curtain.

Each time, it went straight to voicemail. No ring. No click. Just that familiar low tone and Julien's voice, curt and impersonal: *"Leave it short. I'll get back to you."*

He didn't.

I sent a message that night, then deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too. I finally landed on something halfway neutral. "Hey. Can we talk when you have a moment?" It felt ridiculous. Like I was asking to borrow a coffee grinder. I hit send anyway.

Nothing.

I asked Frank again, more directly this time. "Did he say anything before he left?"

Frank shrugged. "Turned in his paperwork. Told me it was just him going. Didn't say goodbye to anyone. Didn't even clean out his locker fully."

I tried to play it cool. Smiled like it was no big deal. "You know how he gets," I said. "Always disappears into himself when he's upset."

But inside, a pit opened.

Julien had left before. To cool off. To work in silence. But he always came back. He always gave me a chance to fix it. Bend things. Twist the narrative just enough to pull him back into orbit.

Not this time.

By the third day, I called from a different number. He still didn't answer.

I even checked with HR. Asked for the transfer timeline, played the concerned-spouse card. The woman on the line said it was a *voluntary reassignment*. Fast-tracked. Approved and cleared in under 24 hours. Julien didn't leave in anger. He left with intention.

That was when I stopped pretending.

He knew.

Not just about Léo. About everything. The way I stalled the family talks. The subtle ways I cut him down when he stopped performing. The cold superiority I never thought he noticed.

He had noticed. He just didn't say anything.

Julien's silence wasn't absence. It was judgment.

And worse than that--it was final.

Somewhere, I imagined his phone lighting up with my name. I imagined his thumb hovering over the screen, debating whether to open the message or let it rot.

But that was just fantasy.

In reality, I didn't even know if the number still worked.

*********

Chapter -- "Out of Range"

(POV: Julien)

I changed my number the morning after I landed in Montreal.

I didn't bother forwarding calls. I didn't set up a voicemail greeting. I just walked into a corner shop, bought a local SIM card, and started fresh. I didn't even give it to HR until the onboarding was done. For the first time in years, my phone was silent. And I liked it that way.

By the second day, I figured she had tried to call. Probably sent something cryptic. Maybe We need to talk. Or worse, something casual. A test to see how mad I was.

I didn't look. I didn't need to.

She would assume I left because I was tired. Or because of the argument last week about starting a family. She would spin a version where I was overwhelmed, emotionally fragile, and just needed space. That was her magic trick. Turning herself into the victim before anyone noticed the knife in her hand.

What she wouldn't expect was silence. Real silence. Not the kind you hold over someone in a fight, but the kind that closes the door and walks away for good.

Frank had probably told her. I figured she asked around. Maybe even called HR. But she didn't know the real reason. Not officially. I never said the words. I didn't give her the satisfaction of knowing when I saw her kiss him. Or how long I stood there. Or how deep that moment carved into me.

She didn't deserve that.

She didn't deserve me.

And if she was pacing the dressing room, waiting for me to storm in and demand answers, she was going to be waiting a long time.

Because the truth wasn't hiding in a confrontation or a shouted match under the rig. It was in the absence. In her reflection without me behind her.

Let her wonder. Let her sit in it.

I had a new number. A new city. A new job. The only part of Las Vegas I brought with me was the lesson.

And I never leave that behind.

Montreal greeted me with snow and silence. Exactly what I wanted.

I didn't unpack much. Just the tools I trusted and the silence I'd earned. The rest stayed boxed. Out of reach.

A year passed like that. Quiet. Controlled. Unremarkable in all the right ways.

Montreal had winter in its bones. The kind that settled in the steel girders and the joints of the old practice rigs. I didn't mind. The cold kept people honest.

I spent most of my days in the rafters or at the console, reviewing tension patterns and maintenance logs. I ran the crew tight. We didn't talk about shows. We talked about safety. Precision. Anchor points. The things that kept people alive when their feet left the ground.

Montreal had winter in its bones. The kind that settled in the steel girders and the joints of the old practice rigs. I didn't mind. The cold kept people honest. I spent most of my days in the rafters or at the console, reviewing tension patterns and maintenance logs. I ran the crew tight. We didn't talk about shows. We talked about safety. Precision. Anchor points. The things that kept people alive when their feet left the ground.

A year had passed. I hadn't reached out to anyone from Vegas. Not once. My phone had stayed silent, except for the occasional check-in from HQ. I had made myself forget Anca's voice, her perfume, the look she used to give me before a drop sequence. Most days, it worked. But sometimes, in the silence between shifts, her face would drift back. Like a trick of the light in a dusty mirror. I'd blink, and it would be gone.

Then, one morning, a legal memo arrived in my inbox. Filing received. Vasile, Anca. Petition: Divorce. Cause: Abandonment.

I stared at it for a while. No emotion. No anger. I clicked Archive and went back to checking the rotation weights on a new static line. That was her final performance. A paperwork finale. No applause.

It was after hours when I first saw her. The rig was mostly cleared, the lights dimmed to maintenance levels. I was finishing an inspection on the secondary trapeze mount when movement caught my eye. A young woman on the wire. No spotter. No safety line. Just her and the tension. She wobbled slightly at midpoint, corrected, and continued like it never happened. Again and again. Sweat soaked through her tank top. Her feet were blistered, bandaged, and she kept going.

I descended quietly and watched her from the floor. She was training the way people do when they are chasing something they can't name. Her movements weren't polished yet, but they were relentless. Her balance was all instinct. It was like watching a song with no sheet music. Wild. Imperfect. Honest.

After twenty minutes, she slipped. A full loss of footing. Arms pinwheeling. Body tilting into open air. I didn't move. Not out of cruelty, but instinct. I wanted to see if she would recover or crumble. She didn't fall. She caught the wire with both hands, pulled herself back up, and kept going like it hadn't happened.

Later, I checked her file. Élodie Marchand. Twenty-eight. Graduated from École Nationale de Cirque. Background in aerial hoop and wire. No major company credits yet. Just one note scrawled at the bottom of the coach's log: "Fearless. Sometimes to a fault."

I saw something in her I hadn't felt in years. Not since I was the one walking that wire, back when flight still meant freedom. And for the first time in a long time, I stayed a little longer than I needed to.

I started staying later than usual. At first, it was under the pretense of equipment checks. Tension recalibration. Harness storage audits. No one questioned it. Everyone knew I was thorough to a fault. But the truth was simpler. I wanted to see how far she would push herself without anyone watching.

Every night, Élodie returned to the wire. She trained in silence, no music, no mirrors, no audience. Just her breath and the creak of taut cable under foot. I watched from the mezzanine or the side rail, always far enough to avoid being noticed, but close enough to study her form. She was reckless, but aware. Her mistakes weren't from lack of focus. They came from testing the limits of her own fear.

One night, she tried a switch-hop sequence well above her level. Slipped on the second shift. Nearly went over. Her recovery was ugly but effective. She landed hard, chest heaving, hands shaking. Instead of stopping, she laughed. Not a big, victorious laugh. A small one. Tired. Honest. That was when I decided to intervene.

The next morning, I left a note on the rig log: "You're training too hard, too fast. If you want guidance, ask for it." I didn't sign my name, but she would figure it out. Only one person reviewed the logs in red ink.

Later that day, she approached me. No introduction. No preamble. Just a quiet, "Was that you?" I nodded. She nodded back. "Good. Then let's begin."

It wasn't a request. It was a challenge. I respected that.

We started working officially two days later. She was sharper when observed, more measured in her technique. The chaos was still there underneath, but now it had a container. She followed cues well. Learned fast. Argued on occasion, but never from ego. It was about the work. The craft. That made her dangerous in the best way.

By the end of the week, I caught myself doing something I hadn't done in a long time. I waited for her to arrive before I began my own prep. And when she stepped into the rigging bay, something in the room shifted. Not electricity. Not desire. Something quieter. Like stillness that had been waiting to be broken.

I didn't speak to her that night. I rarely did.

But the next time I climbed the rig alone, I caught a flicker of movement from the upper gallery.

Someone else was watching.

*********

Chapter -- "The Ghost in Flight"

(POV: Élodie)

I stayed late that night, not for training, but curiosity. He thought I had gone home, but I hadn't. I was upstairs, stretching near the catwalk rail when I saw him climb the rig, with no crew, and no cue lighting. Just the soft ambient glow of the practice bay and the hollow echo of footfalls above.

Julien moved with the kind of confidence people cannot fake. Measured. Deliberate. Spare. I had watched him walk the floor, check cables, rerun tension tests, bark at careless riggers, but I had never seen him in the air. Never seen him like this.

He stepped onto the wire like it was part of him. The rig lights were on low, casting long shadows across the crash mat below. No warmup. No hesitation. Just motion. He didn't walk it. He breathed it. Smooth transfer, heel to toe. Perfect distribution. His back stayed straight. Core tight. Shoulders low. Arms loose, not stiff like most instructors. I had studied enough to know the difference. What he did wasn't technique. It was memory written into the muscles.