Let's be fair, 'brain surgeon' and 'modest' are quite possibly two (three, sir, three.) of the most incompatible and antonymous words in the English language. Like 'Worcestershire sauce' and 'waffles'.

So excuse him if his eight years of medical school and three years of residency and a decade of a smashing start to a high-class career made him a little cocky.

In his prime, he was a god among men. He had the power to give life, or to take it, and he chose to give life, because that's just what you were supposed to do. Never withhold good from someone, when it is within your power to give it, right? He chose to give life.

In his prime, he outshone his peers; they practically bowed before him. Like a star he blazed brilliantly….

Like a star he fell to Earth in fire.

"What… did they do?..."

He ruined himself in his arrogance—and from where would redemption come?

Certainly not an expected place…. At least, not expected in the sense that he never would have seen himself as a freaking superhero twenty years later, when he entered Med school at the tender age of seventeen.

And for all of his past sins, he burned when he fought Dormammu for the very first time.

"Dormammu, I've come to bargain!"

Of course, because things just couldn't be that easy, he didn't just burn. He was splattered against the ground, stabbed, suffocated, exsanguinated, incinerated, eviscerated more times than he would care to count, and a few other means of death that honestly as a doctor he didn't even know were physically possible.

And every time he came back to do it again, because he could. Because he had to. Just like always… his job was to give life, not to take it.

"This is how things are now! You and me, trapped in this moment. Endlessly."

"Then you will spend eternity dying!"

But… when they fought Thanos… things changed. They changed a lot. And it was probably because the stakes were higher. Who died, who lived…

He was possibly the best tactician, because he could see alternate futures…. Find out which route was the best to take.

He looked through fourteen million, six hundred and five different outcomes, and out of all of them, only one had a desirable outcome.

It was actually one of the first ones he'd found… but it was so unbelievably wrong that he couldn't bring himself to accept it, and he had forced himself to keep looking.

But in the end… in the end he failed. He failed in every way that mattered.

It wasn't because they had lost, far be it. In all reality, they were closer to winning than anyone could possibly believe, because now the playing field was leveled for a smackdown rematch later on. How much later, he couldn't say, but the rematch was bound to happen eventually. And now, Stephen Strange liked the odds….

But he failed. Because this time, he didn't give life. He took life. He made a call, and he watched some newfound friends and frienemies dissolve out of reality.

"…I don't wanna go!..."

And he couldn't reckon himself to that. So what happened afterward…. He was oddly grateful for. And he even gave Stark a parting encouragement, a nudge to try for that rematch that the heroes now actually had a comparatively good chance of winning.

He didn't give life that day… he gave opportunity, because this time, he couldn't give life. He could only give an opportunity, a chance at a second try.

And maybe, maybe if they followed the little nudges down their paths that he had given to them…

Maybe it was the same as giving life.