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The Ruined Abbe	By : pip Category: M through R > Quills Views: 2536 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Quills, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
Author’s Note:
Ok, apologies for the long exposition, but there be heavy themes ahead, and I wanted to distill them enough so that what happens next will make sense. I needed to find a way of making the Marquis’ POV clear even though I am compelled to write from Coulmier’s perspective.
I hope you enjoy it. As always, feedback welcome and encouraged.

Chapter Twelve
Days had passed since the Marquis’ death, he wasn’t entirely sure how many, and Coulmier had slept just that once. People shuffled to and fro outside his door – some of them knocked, but he didn’t answer them. He knew that eventually they would become insistent, that he would have to face the sensational nature of his exposure and leave here, but for now his ignorance made them give up.
Every now and again, in the deep of the night or early morning, when the place was quiet and still, when he knew there was no one waiting outside his cell, he unlocked his door and checked to see if anyone had brought him food, or more importantly water.
They never had, and Coulmier knew it wasn’t for lack of kindness or consideration. He still had friends on the staff who, regardless of what Sade had written about him, would not leave him to thirst and starve. No. Someone out there in Charenton meant him harm, someone out there was making sure he suffered, and he knew it was the doctor. Hadn’t he seen the way he treated the patients? Hadn’t the character of Charenton changed beyond recognition as it came under his influence?
Even when the Marquis was allowed every freedom Coulmier could grant, including the opportunity to write his own words and share them with the other inmates, the asylum had at heart been a wholesome, curative place. Now it was barely more than a torture chamber. Royer-Collard may have been sent to Charenton by Napoleon, but then he may also as well have stepped through time and come straight from the worst years of the Inquisition.
Charenton was now a place of horrors, even without the piteous and entwined tale of himself, Sade and Madeleine. Not to mention Bouchon.
His water gone, Coulmier turned eventually in his thirst to the small stock of communion wine he kept in his cell. As a result, he blundered around clumsily in semi-drunken misery, dehydrated, hunger gnawing at him, making him weaker still, and aware with every sip that moistened his throat that he was going to lose the fight against sleep. It made him want to sleep.
To keep himself awake he went through the liturgical mass again and again, until his voice was gone and he spoke in pained whispers, finding that this enforced and lengthy penitence at least gave him back some semblance of belief. He prayed, hoping desperately to be heard, for his plight – all of it – to be looked upon with pity, and despite the lack of a true confessional, in the darkest of his moments he was sure that God heard him, was with him, and absolved him, because that was what he preached more than anything else: In His Infinite Mercy, God forgives.
But nothing changed, and eventually he fell into an unconscious stupor on the floor where he had been kneeling, the chalice he had been using tumbling from his relaxed grip to spill its contents on the flags, shiny and red in the twilight that came through his narrow, barred window. If it had been blood , if there had truly been a miracle, then perhaps he might have been saved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he next opened his eyes, the Marquis was back, just sitting there in the half-light, waiting for him again. As before, he was on his bed, on his front, but now he was naked, and his arms and legs were stretched out and bound to the four corners. He stayed quite calm, and didn’t struggle or try to put any distance between himself and Sade.
Now he knew for certain it was a dream. The lucidity of it might make it seem more real than being awake, especially with his water gone, but he knew. As before, he tried deliberately to wake up, but didn’t really expect success. Coulmier suspected he’d probably lost consciousness rather than fallen asleep, and as such he might be dreaming for a while.
From his restrained position, he turned his head to look at Sade, resplendent again, marvelling at how detailed the vision was. He could even see the intricate weaving of the occasional golden thread in his cravat. Eventually, he moistened his lips, and was glad to find that in his dreams, he was no longer thirsty.
“You can’t hurt me.” At least now, he was sure of that. His endless prayers had granted him an inner peace, and since this was no haunting, since these dreams were a construct of his own mind, nothing bad could happen to him in them. Or at least, he amended, remembering how they had gone before Sade’s death, nothing worse.
“I beg to differ,” Sade replied with a short and sinister laugh, sounding dangerous nevertheless, making his heart dance slightly in alarm. Coulmier had to admit his imagination furnished a fully rounded representation. Secretly, he was quite proud of it. But he had no need to fear anymore, and so he simply stared back at the Marquis, remembering how he had surrendered to the real one, but not tempted to do so now.
“You’re a product of my own mind, and in my own mind, I am forgiven.” The explanation was sensible and logical, so why did he suddenly think it sounded too trite? Too convenient? Uneasy, he tried to move and wasn’t surprised to find it impossible.
“Is that so?” Sade asked with a smirk, brushing imaginary dust from his clothes. Despite his certainty, the perfect confidence of the Marquis made him shiver, and he resolutely refused to let his imagination respond to the dark promise in that reply.
“I have done nothing but pray for days,” Coulmier said quietly, slightly uncomfortable, as if this was the confession, and his previous dedications had been merely a façade. “God has – ”
“God means fuck all here, Abbé.” Coulmier closed his eyes briefly at the sudden use of language, as if the Marquis had slapped him across the face. Sade got up and walked around the small stone cell, out of his sight, then back into it again. He had picked up a statue of the Madonna, and now he ran his fingers over it so suggestively and with such a wicked glance in Coulmier’s direction that his inference was unmistakable. Coulmier felt the blood draining from his face, and his body was suddenly weak and useless, his stomach felt full of lead.
Before Coulmier could react, he spoke again. “This is your God, is it not?” The words weren’t strictly correct, after all it was the Madonna he held, and yet they did fit, all too well. Coulmier heard himself speak them, as he had so many times before in his guilt. By taking away the only outlet the Marquis had, he may well have caused that terrible night. And then, later, that moment when he’d had Sade mutilated, willingly, at Royer-Collard’s encouragement.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, wishing for the first time that the Marquis really was a spectre, so that he could hear it. Even when he’d been gifted the chance to apologise out loud, those last few moments of Sade’s life in his arms, he’d instead tried to give last rites to a man who spurned them, even unto death. Wasted time!
“So. It’s like justice.” The words were cruel, but no worse than his own. These he had spoken too, and he was forced to recall them again, but his thoughts were cut short when he saw the Marquis raise the statuette in his hand to dash it against the wall.
“No!” But it was too late, and the virgin lay broken in pieces on the floor. Despite his horror at the violent act, and the meaning of it, Coulmier was also relieved. If the statue was broken, Sade couldn’t use it to defile him as he had hinted.
As he walked back to take his seat at the side of the bed, pieces of the porcelain crunched under his feet, making Coulmier wince. “Forgiveness from the Almighty means nothing. Your own forgiveness? Well, then, as a mere shade, I’d be worried.”
Now his mind returned to the remembrance of his guilt, and he thought not of his words, but that terrible operation which he hadn’t the heart to stay and witness. He remembered now how he had insisted it should be done without relief from the pain, and shook his head against the sheet beneath his face, the softness against his skin felt so real for a dream and much too merciful. God could forgive him, but himself? “How can I?” he whispered in tearful regret, the woven cotton soaking up the dampness as if to steal it from him.
“Indeed. I know you. I know you can’t, even though you’re aware that I will thoroughly poison every last symbol you cherish.” Upon hearing that, Coulmier turned his head again, and found Sade regarding him with a kind of dark hunger. “When I have finished, you won’t even be able to look on a cross without needing to avert your eyes,” he said, and then his lips curled in a sneer. “Much less worship at it.”
“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, again trying to move, because he was willing to be on his knees as a supplicant, if that was required of him.
“Oh?” the Marquis said in amusement, unmoved. “Are you so impatient to begin, mon ami?” He switched from staring at Coulmier to look down at himself as he stood up in clear self-admiration. “But then, after all, why not?”
“You know what I mean!” Coulmier cried out explosively as Sade sat on the bed beside him, making the mattress dip so that he knew if he wasn’t restrained, he would have tumbled into the Marquis’ lap. Then, more quietly: “Don’t do it. What does it profit you?”
One finger stroked slowly up the centre of his back, over his vertebrae, making him shiver. “When I speak of cruel intentions, does it pain you?” Coulmier swallowed, frightened now because he knew there was to be no mercy. “It’s all right. You can tell me,” Sade murmured, one hand in Coulmier’s hair now, fingertips stroking his scalp in a way that made him want to sigh. Confide in him, why not? Might it even move him?
“Of course it does,” he replied, turning his head again so that his voice was muffled by the bed. “Don’t do those… things. Don’t take them away from me. Not forever.” Now that he had begun to speak of it, he found he couldn’t stop. “Please. If you want me to beg, I will. If you want me willing, you have my consent. Anything but… not that.”
There was silence for a minute and a warm thumb rubbed against his ear. “Continue,” Sade said in a slightly ragged voice, and Coulmier turned his head sharply, seeing the truth, seeing that Sade enjoyed his desperate anguish as much as he enjoyed violating his body. He didn’t need to see the Marquis’ other hand pressing to the front of his breeches, but he saw it regardless.
“No,” he said, wanting to deny him any more of that twisted enjoyment.
“Now you understand.” The hand travelled back down his body, and rested heavily on his buttocks, fingernails scratching at his skin.
“What are you going to do?” Coulmier asked quietly, defeated.
“Whatever causes you pain.” Hearing it didn’t make it easier to face, and he trembled beneath that hand, completely unable to control it.
“You had a touch of charity in your soul when you were alive,” he said wistfully, wishing he could still inspire it. “Not much, but I… It was enough. I never hated you for what we did. I was there too.”
“Well, when I was alive, I liked you.”
“And now?” he asked, feeling slightly breathless because the Marquis’ fingers were now between his legs, tracing patterns over the sensitive skin on the inside of his thighs. Now he felt knuckles gently grazing the back of his balls, and he moaned without meaning to, aware that he was twisting his hands and ankles in their bonds as if to escape.
“I like you for the pleasure you can give me. That is all,” Sade said simply.
“And for that I must suffer?”
“Oh, yes.” The insistence made his soul shrink, even as his body was waking up. “But that isn’t why you suffer.”
“Enlighten me,” he said, willing to encourage and indulge Sade in this strange conversation if it would prolong this gentleness, if it would delay the horror to come.
The little touches stopped suddenly, as if the Marquis knew what he was thinking, and then leaned over his prone body, hands gripping his bound wrists. He pressed a cheek against Coulmier’s own, and then drew back just slightly, enough so he could feel the warmth of Sade’s breath in his ear. “If only you were like others of your profession, Coulmier,” he murmured, as if it was a secret he told. “If you were a hypocrite, and impure; if your desires were as twisted as my own, why then, what could I really do to you?” Coulmier listened, and inside him his heart slowed to a crawl at the truth of it. “But you’re none of those things. You’ll suffer precisely because you are virtuous.”
“Enough,” he said dully. It was too candid to listen to. And then, so quietly he could barely hear it himself, he said: “Do what you must, then.”
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The Ruined Abbe