-Unbetaed and not native speaker so please kindly point out any mistakes.

He felt thousands of fire needles pricking his skin as he plunged to the Earth. Where was Sophie? He then remembered that he asked her to help Hawkeye because his arrows would do the most damage to those creatures. The Avengers were not even aware of his presence. When he reached here, they were already battling those demons without realizing the source of the rifts. He knew it would be too late for Sophie to reach him as he would fall splat in 4 seconds with the height and speed he were going. Sometime he hated physics, and would never become a physicist. At least he had closed the rifts to another dimension so it was a good thing he was a sorcerer, not a physicist.

Perhaps he should start to pray rather than questioning his life choices at the last second of his life.

"I don't want to die as this world would be unprotected!" He was surprised by his last second prayer.

Suddenly he was not plunging headfirst anymore, instead he was being lifted up. Had Sophie come to rescue him?

"In that case, perhaps you should call for backup first before trying to close the rift by yourself. I thought you were smarter than that, Dr. Strange."

He opened his eyes that he didn't realize he had closed. How embarrassing! He was carried bridal style by Iron Man. "Stark…" Thousands of fire needles coursing through his veins and he felt numb so he stopped. He knew a spell to remove it. He closed his eyes as he incanted the spell quietly. He knew Stark thought him as a cuckoo so don't need to give Stark more verbal arsenal to insult him.

"Friday, analysis on Dr. Strange."

He could hear a female voice coming out of Stark's coms. Stark must have put it on speaker for his benefit. "Dr. Strange has been losing a lot of blood. He needs a transfusion soon. He also had a variation of curare coursing through his veins. I've already called Dr. Cho so she would know what to prepare. There was some unknown energy in his body before but now it was gone. I believe Dr. Strange has taken care of that himself."

"Thank you, Friday."

Oh, that was the reason he still felt so weak and numb although the burning sensation had gone. The needles were magical but the poison and blood loss were not. "Stark, I could take care of myself. I'm a doctor. Thank you for the lift. You could drop me at my Sanctum." He didn't want to owe the Avengers.

"Who do you think I'm? A UPS guy? Have you heard what Friday said? I know you heroic type likes to self-sacrifice but your stubbornness has reached the level of martyrdom. Not to mention, what you were doing trying to close the rift alone?"

"I'm not what you called the heroic type. I just need to do what was necessary. It was magical so the Avengers wouldn't be able to do it. I wasn't trying to close it. I succeeded in closing it."

"I'm glad you keep your wits about you despite your poison. Fine, you succeeded. But at what cost? What do you think the Avengers would feel if you died while we were battling?"

"I didn't plan to die. I didn't know that the rift had a self-protecting mechanism. You don't need to worry about me because I'm not an Avenger."

"Do you know how silly you sounded just now? Just because you are not an Avenger, that doesn't mean we will let you die especially after you just saved our bacon. You know what… I shouldn't be the sound of reason in this conversation. I'm the unreasonable one in the group. Steve would never hear the end of it."

What he wanted to reply died in this throat as it was starting to get difficult to breathe. It was also difficult for him to stay conscious.

"Friday, ETA."

"Three seconds, Mr. Stark. Dr. Cho is ready." That was the last thing he heard before everything went dark.

Notes:

-Yeah, I planned it to be one-shot but I'm evil so it will be concluded in the next chapter.