Beautiful Insanity (A Skyrim/Oblivion Fanfiction) ((ORIGINAL))

Russet

Note: Mentions of suicide.

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RUSSETPOV

I stared at the odd man, his eyes sweeping over us.

"Who are you, Haskill?" my husband asked warily. Haskill lifted his hand and inspected his fingernails, visibly bored.

"I am Lord Sheogorath's chamberlain. I advise Them, Masters of Madness, Lords of the Never-There." Both Brynjolf and my eldest daughter seemed confused by his response.

"What in Oblivion is he saying?" Bryn growled. "How did he even get in here?"

"Magic, of course," Haskill responded matter-of-factly. "I am not truly here. As I appear to you, I am an apparition. My body is in the Shivering Isles with... Sheogorath." My thoughts turned. I thought Sheogorath was with me here. My hand moved subconsciously to my bag where the Daedric Prince was hidden. Haskill's eyes flicked to me as I did so, as if he knew what I hid.

"Which Sheogorath?" I covered smoothly, as though I didn't know that Regina was, of course, the Sheogorath he spoke of. "The one Karliah-- er, Nocturnal-- destroyed, or my daughter?"

"Neither," he replied. "And the one your Nocturnal destroyed was no longer Sheogorath by the time he was... ahem... obliterated." His form flickered, and I gritted my teeth.

"Keep your ass here," I demanded. Haskill merely stared at me, obviously unimpressed.

"I regret to inform you that I lack any control over this," he told me. Brynjolf shuffled uneasily while Kary seemed curious about the stranger. "I am using the Font of Madness to project my image across realms, which I'm sure someone as bright as you can imagine is quite difficult to keep stable." His voice sounded annoyed, as though being in our very presence irritated him. Haskill's eyes moved to Kary, who spoke for the first time since he'd arrived.

"What do you mean, 'neither'?" Haskill tipped his head slightly at her query.

"Are you the only one that listens to what I have to say in this family?" he murmured. "Good. Relay to your parents that--"

"I can hear what you're saying, jackass!" The stranger turned his head to stare at my husband, seemingly unperturbed by the insult. Brynjolf's arm still held the sword straight out. The tip dipped down, and I laid my fingers on the flat of the blade.

"Put the sword down," I told him quietly. After a moment, he grudgingly obeyed, though not without a grunt of irritation.

"Go on," Kary intoned, and Haskill's gaze returned to her. "If it's not the other Sheogorath, and it's not my sister, then who is it?"

"It is Nocturnal, the one that your namesake slayed years ago," came the reply. A mixture of shock and confusion filled me.

"What? No, that's impossible," I denied. "Something that's dead like that, a Daedric Prince-- it can't come back. It's gone." Kary let out a huff, something she did when thinking deeply.

"Ma, I don't know. Remember how I said before about how nothing truly disappears? That... what if there's a place that Daedric Princes go after death? Mehrunes Dagon, Sheogorath, who knows what else... they could all be there." Haskill bowed to my daughter, and I detected a bit of admiration in his stance.

"That is correct, young lady. The Halls of the Damned hold the dead spirits of many previous Daedric Princes." He took a deep breath, and I caught a strange kind of pain in his expression, a noticeable change from his previous indifference. "That is where the true Sheogorath lies." I watched as the bitter face of the ambassador wandered to my bag once more. I met his questioning glare, and I sent him a silent plea to not tell my family. We held it for a few seconds until he averted his eyes. "That is where Regina is. She took a shard of glass and sunk it into her stomach, though her reasons for doing so are unclear to me."

The house was silent as his words sank in. Mere seconds passed before the room exploded with noise. A breathless gasp escaped my lips, and tears sprang to my eyes. Not only had he confirmed Sanguine's words, but it was a thought that would never stop stinging.

"So it's true... no, it can't be. Tell me this is a jest," Brynjolf pleaded, his voice a mixture of hatred and fear. "This is all a damn joke, you're trying to humiliate us in some way..." The strange man stared at us with vague sympathy. "This is some Daedric prank among you all! You're lying!" he spat at Haskill hatefully. Bryn's face was full of open hostility, and he raised the sword again. "She wouldn't! This is a trick!" Before any of us could stop him, he swung the sword towards the image, though the blade passed straight through. Haskill wavered and vanished. When he returned, irritation was clear in the downward turn to his mouth.

Kary slumped to the floor, and I bit my lip. Not once had I considered how my eldest child might feel, and I made my way over to her with guilt weighing down my limbs. A sob escaped her lips, and I wrapped my arms around her. "This is my fault, she k-killed herself because of me!"

"This isn't your fault," I comforted her, wiping my own tears away. Brynjolf turned to us, unsure of his next action. He shook with agitation, and I sensed the fight going on in his mind. "This was never your fault, Kary."

"I made her feel inferior to me," Kari argued sorrowfully.

"It wasn't just you," Brynjolf put in. He placed the sword down reluctantly and knelt beside us. He quickly sent a warning glare to the stranger in our home before returning his attention to Kari. "She did it to herself. Regina thought we tossed her aside." I expected to feel angry at where he gave the blame, but only felt ashamed. However he spun it, everything Regina had done was because of me.

"Didn't we, though?" I muttered despairingly. "Whether we caused it or not, we should have noticed, Brynjolf." A thought occurred to me, and I lifted myself off the floor. "You." Haskill glanced up at me and raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't you stop her? You bastard, why didn't you stop her?!" I threw myself at the apparition, causing it to disappear. I fell to the floor by the force of my motion, hitting an oaken cupboard. A wave of self-hatred washed over me, and I held my knees close to my chest. "Damn it all..." Prayers ran through my mind nonstop for it to be false despite both Sanguine and Haskill, for my daughter to live. Still, somewhere in my heart, I knew without a doubt that Regina was gone, and that had been because of me.

Both Kari and Bryn came over, tears on their cheeks as well. Brynjolf helped me stand, and Kari clutched to me strongly. We wept together for an unknown length of time until our tears ran out and we sobbed with dry eyes. Pain struck at my heart, and Brynjolf's hand clutched mine tightly. Kari whimpered and gasped. I instinctively reached out to comfort my distraught daughter, hugging her head to my shoulder. I stroked her hair like I did when she was a toddler, softly singing my children's lullaby.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are gray.
You'll never know, dear
How much I love you.
Please don't take
My sunshine
Away