A/N: Whooo boy, clearly I was in a weird place when I wrote this one! Please don't hold it against me. ^_^ Boo the World's Cutest Dog is real and can be squealed in delight over at boothedog dot net. I have no affiliation with Boo, except that I agree he's ridiculously adorable.

The funny thing about Death was that it looked a lot like the surface of Mars.

All around me, it was rocky and barren, reddish brown dirt as far as I could see. Silent. Unmoving. My first thought was, "Well… shit. I never thought the Afterlife was going to be so boring."

I took a few hesitant steps before it hit me, like a delayed reaction. PAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN. I hissed and fell to my knees in the dirt. Every part of my body screamed, every single cell wall vibrated in agony, burning as though I had been stuck by lightning or jumped into liquid nitrogen.

I trembled in the dust for several eternities. At some point I realized that Hell was real, and this was it. Hell wasn't filled with fire, it was empty and cold… the kind of cold that bites so hard I had to scream.

I opened my mouth to let the pain out, but there was still nothing but silence. I whimpered. How was I supposed to be rid of the pain if it was bound to me? I cracked my eyes open, maybe there was something pushing the pain against my skin, not letting it go.

Inches from my face, sitting politely, was a small dog.

"B… Boo?" I croaked. The little Pomeranian cocked its head.

"I'm dead," I murmured at it, "and I'm on Mars…. with Boo, the World's Cutest Dog…?"

The dog licked my nose. Suddenly (magically, blissfully!) the pain began to recede.

"That seems to be the case," replied Boo, his voice clearly that of Benedict Cumberbatch. I stared at him. Because really…. what else could I do?

"Although," Boo clarified thoughtfully, "I'm not entirely sure we're dead. We're certainly not alive, but I think that if we were fully and completely dead, there would be less Mars. And less Boo. And less you!"

"Oh God," I moaned, rolling on to my back in the red dirt.

"I haven't seen Him," Boo said. "Maybe God doesn't get out to Mars much."

"Why are you here, Boo?" I whimpered, wishing it would all go away and I could be dead or alive or whatever definitive state I was destined for.

"I don't know, Skye. Why are we here? We've never been to Mars before, it seems like a very strange place to go to die."

"Curiosity," I mumbled.

"This is a very macabre scenario to ponder," Boo huffed in his dulcet Cumberbatch tones.

"No, no," I winced. "Curiosity, the Mars Rover. It has a website, you can…can look at its photos and videos and… and see Mars. I love Curiosity. I check it every day. I follow it on Twitter."

"Ahh. I see," Boo replied suspiciously. "So we've come to Mars to die because of Curiosity. And I'm Boo the World's Cutest Dog because…?"

"I don't know, Boo."

"Skye, I think you spend too much time on the internet."

"If you're going to chastise me like Sister Ethna, can you please not sound like Benedict Cumberbatch when you do it? Too harsh!" I whined.

"Grrrrrff," Boo rumbled. He padded lightly to my side and nudged my arm. He was soft and warm. I placed my hand on his puffy fur and sighed.

"Maybe we should get up and look around," Boo suggested.

"No. I tried that, it hurt. Like…. A LOT."

"We weren't ready yet when you did," Boo replied. "We were still falling into Death. Something caught us, though…. right near the end. It's still holding us… although we're very heavy, and it won't be able to hold us for very long."

I sat up with a start. "Boo, you're holding out on me! You know more than you're letting on."

Boo shrugged, which was very odd for an imaginary figment and even stranger for a Pomeranian. "It just occurred to us."

"Any other helpful revelations?"

"Well I don't know how helpful any of this is, Skye. But we noticed that you're very brave and very strong, and they love you very much."

"Who does?"

"Your family. The family that you made. They must be the ones who caught us."

"You mean, the rest of the team?"

"You're going to argue semantics with a dog?"

"You said they caught us…? How?"

"I have no idea. We remember being shot, we remember Life leaving. There was a distressing amount of blood. Logically, there was no way to catch us. Yet here we are, a dog on Mars. But I wouldn't get your hopes up too high."

"You're a peach, Boo. A real cheerleader."

The Pomeranian huffed forlornly. "I don't see how this is our fault. You're the one who won't even get up off the ground. That red dirt will probably stain."

"Fine!" I relented, hauling myself slowly to my feet. Now that I was standing, Boo seemed very small.

"I am very small," he frowned at my unspoken thought. "Pick me up."

I rolled my eyes and lifted the little dog up. He made several rumbly Cumberbatch sounds deep in his chest. "Any ideas?" I asked him.

"We have plenty of ideas," Boo sniffed. "Which ones do you want?"

"All of them?"

"Sprayable bacon. An app that scans a sample of someone's handwriting and generates a font. Changing our reddit username to something less… provocative. A topographical survey of Agent Ward's jaw conducted solely by tongue…"

"Okay, enough, Boo! Oh my God! I meant, any ideas about being dead? And what I should be doing about it?" I blushed furiously at the Pomeranian. Awkward.

"Frankly, I don't think there is very much we can do about being dead, Skye. If there was, I'm sure that someone would have tried it before."

"You mean, like Agent Coulson did?"

Boo looked skeptical. "No, not at all. That was a result of something being done about being dead, not doing it oneself. Which is, by the way, the same place we find ourselves. Someone will have to do something about our being dead, there is very little we can do about it from Mars."

"Very little, you said, but not nothing."

"We could try clicking our heels together," suggested Boo. "And say 'there's no place like home'."

"That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, even from a dog."

"We won't know unless we try," Boo uttered defensively. "And it's all just a metaphor anyway, isn't it? You're not very clever when you're dead."

"A metaphor? What do you mean?"

"A metaphor for hope, Skye. If we want to be not dead, or perhaps more than not dead or even something closer to alive, we're going to have to really want it. More than anything."

"But I do! I don't want to be dead! Or near dead or… not alive or whatever this is! I do want to be fully and completely alive!"

"Well in that case, we should consider those ideas, then. How awesome would sprayable bacon be? That's certainly worth living for."

"…. You're a dog. Of course that would inspire you."

"Well, think about Agent Ward's chin, then. More than we usually do, I mean. Think about every contour and dimple, the accidental brush of stubble against our skin, the way it changes when we can get him to smile and his cheekbones turn into assault with heavenly weapons…"

"Boo," I moaned, "this is going to be the most embarrassing undeath in history if I wake up writhing and gasping his name. Can we tone it down a bit? Please?"

"I thought you really wanted it," sniffed Boo.

"Yes, it! Not him! Well. Okay, yes, him, but…."

"You know, the more indecisive we are about this, the heavier we get," interrupted Boo. "Try to remember that they're still trying to hold us up. If we're waffling on this whole death thing, we're going to slip away. We need to commit…. and I mean, right now. What's it going to be, Skye? Are we dying on Mars, or are we going to imagine Ward's chin and fight?"

"Boo the World's Cutest Dog…. you suck," I replied, my teeth set with determination. "Chin."

"Well okay, then," Boo smiled. "We've got our metaphor for Life. Let's get started. It's a powerful, square jaw, of course… as though he could have any other kind….."