Ok, so I originally thought this was a bug with brawling, but the problem seems to have been much worse, to the point of being game-breaking, especially if I want to do the companions questline. Basically, any NPC that is supposed to be protected from death, whether it be from brawling, marking them essential (via either natural or using console commands), cutscenes.... they die anyway. I've been trying to figure this out on my own for a week now, but google has been the most unhelpful thing in the world. This is my current load order... i've already tried the game without half of the mods listed here, but if anyone has heard of this issue, please, let me know! I'm just about to drop all mods and go back to vanilla!