Twist of ironies usually made her laugh.

This did not.

All nine of the most highly trained killers Mann Co could get their hands on died in that endless barrage of robots sent by the scheming little Gray Mann. One by one, some blissfully quickly, some agonizingly slowly.

She was tasked to overseeing their burials. Only the closest of family could come to the funerals, shell-shocked mothers and anguished sisters burying their tear-streaked faces in their black mourning sleeves.

When the last guest finally trickled away, she was left alone in that graveyard that smelled of pine and stone, standing in front of nine graves with simple names and birthdates carved in the granite marble with nine flowers in her arms. Flowers and unopened letters lay on the freshly turned earth, wet with dew.

She read their real names, names of men (most of them) with dreams and hopes. She remembered how she had watched them striding from their flaming base, carrying shining metal weapons and bedaubed with blood, but their faces shone with fierce undiluted bravery.

No matter how much blood had dripped off their hands, they still fought like demons, for the people that entrusted them with jobs. With a purpose.

But when the unrelenting robots kept pouring off their transports, wave after unescapable wave, the men, those beings of flesh and blood, began to fall, eyes wide with pain and shock. The Respawn had been crushed by the Heavy robots.

The first to fall was the Soldier. That reckless man of America, the patriot with the impossible rocket launcher, was shot in the chest by a cunning mechanical Sniper robot. He fell with a choked laugh, a wavering salute, and a final rocket missile in the direction of his killer.

Heavy had let out a roar of rage, sending a hail of bullets towards the cold army that slaughtered Soldier. Medic was murmuring German in a faltering voice, the Medi-gun steadily trained on the bear of a man. It was this unfaltering focus on someone other than him that cost the doctor his life.

A Spy robot reared out of nowhere and cut the Medic's jugular in a vicious swipe. No one heard him fall, no one saw him slump to the ground. He fell silently, eyes wide, mouth open in a belated warning cry.

Heavy only noticed when he felt the loss of the Medi-gun's sustaining powers. He raced to the doctor's side, but the man was already gone, fingers locked in a death grip around the gun's trigger.

Without the Medic, they had no one to heal their wounds. The Demoman was bleeding heavily from a Kukri in his abdomen, and Pyro let out muffled wails as his (her?) leg was snapped by a sly Soldier robot, a perfect replica of their fallen comrade.

Scout raced to and fro with thin gauze bandages, hastily constructed splints made from the broken arms of robots, but it was all in vain. They knew it.

The Engineer, his face grim, kept up making more dispensers than sentries, and this selfless though foolhardy act killed him. A Scout robot, and a Force-a-Nature, and the gentle man with the Southern accent was blown apart with a scream of agony.

Heavy smashed robots with his bare fists when his beloved Sascha exhausted itself, and bellowed with fury and anguish as he continued to smash, to rip and destroy. When multiple bullets tore into him, he staggered, but he cried aout a Russian curse as he finally collapsed, an arrow in his neck.

The Spy was set on fire by a Pyro mech, and the raw sounds of searing pain ripped from his throat, the ladies' man who favored beautiful things and spoke gently and precisely, and Scout, his hated rival, put him out with angry tears in his eyes. The wounds proved too much, and Spy died in the boy's thin arms.

She had watched with hands to her mouth. The stoic Administrator had dropped her cigarette, and it rolled smoldering on the ground. They could do nothing. Even they could do nothing with the weapons they had on hand. They could only watch.

They watched as the Sniper was ripped apart by a berserk Heavy robot, his mouth clenched so tightly to keep from screaming they later found out he had bitten off his own tongue.

They watched as the Demoman was shoved into a wooden room brimming with explosives and then a Pyro robot tossed in a match in an almost poetic motion, setting the room ablaze.

They watched as the real Pyro had his mask ripped off, only to have an Engineer robot snap it roughly, ruining any chance to see the real face behind the fireman's mask.

And they watched as Scout, the last one alive, stood in front of the robots, surrounded by the huge swelling crowd of mechanical monstrosities. He tossed his crooked bat aside, a resentful motion, and shut his eyes for the last blow, a single bullet from his robotic counterpart, straight in the eye.

He fell, blood trailing in the air. Scarlet droplets that hung in suspended motion before her horrified eyes, and then it was over.

A hand on her shoulder. The Administrator, a tiny crack in her carefully made mask, a glimpse of humanity. The Administrator knew of her connection, her bond with that falling boy.

She had meant to tell him that his unreciprocated infatuations were not as unreciprocated as he had thought.

She now stood in front of his grave, memories of his cocky attitude swimming through her head. She remembered all of them, the way the men shared terrible beer with each other, laughing at crude jokes and quips made at 3 AM in the morning.

Sometimes she joined in with their antics, sipping some of their terrible beer, playing board games that had faded game boards, and laughed with them, sometimes sweat-dropping at their unexpected brawls. They shared so much with her by these 3 AM meetings.

Instead, she repaid them with corpse grade quicklime.

So now, laying a single yellow tulip on each of their graves (a red rose on HIS), her lower lip quivering ever so slightly, Miss Pauling bid them something she was always telling the people who wandered into her life and then went out like candles in a breeze.

"Goodbye."

A/N: I'm sorry.