He considered. It would be selfish, Dr. Strange supposed. Beyond measure. Why should it be him over anyone else, anyone in the world, in the universe, in any of the universes? (Because who else could do it?) This was what Mordo feared, Stephen understood. Perverting the natural order. Defying the laws of nature. (Death, a whisper in his mind insisted. Fighting death.) It would be wrong. Some powers were simply not meant to be used selfishly. Some things were not meant to be trifled with. Stephen strange knew full well that this was one of them. (And yet…) The Sorcerer Supreme, newly titled and still growing into the name of his predecessor, knew without a shadow of a doubt that no matter how long he considered, he would not do it.
So it was best not to think about.
Wong, having been alive a long time himself and a sorcerer most of his life, believed himself to know a great deal about the Eye of Agamemnon and what it was worth. In one respect, yes, he knew a great deal more about what Stephen was giving up - not knowing about the Infinity Stones and already the new Sorcerer Supreme! He hoped the Ancient One knew what she was doing picking him. (As if he would ever truly doubt her. Not even her contact with Dormammu could shake his faith. He wasn't about to stop now.) Wong believed that he knew more than Strange what was being given up, being surrendered. He did not of course fully the depth of what Dr. Strange was surrendering.
Later, Stephen would look down at his hands, still shaky and scared, one wrist adorned with a broken watch, and smile. It was the sort of smile one gave when they were grieving. It was silly, of course, to be regretful. While some things could be changed, perhaps he was willing to acknowledge now that they still shouldn't be. Hadn't he just promised himself to stop thinking about this?
Ah, but he was already nostalgic. Thinking of her… he hadn't done that, not for years. Not since he became more than a man, holding her hand at her bedside. Stephen hadn't thought of his sister since shortly after she'd died. Not out of cruelty or neglect, but because it had hurt too much at the time. Somehow, the idea of bringing her back, now that it was even conceivably possible, made it less painful to know he would never see her again.
They hadn't been rich, growing up. Stephen had been much older than her, nearly a decade. She hadn't gotten sick until she was seven, had held out for years until he'd finally gotten his medical degree and could help. And he'd cured her. He had done it. She'd been healthy, happy, planning to go to school and become a doctor herself, follow in his footsteps. Steps that the newly-made Doctor Strange had only taken to ensure that she lived when no one, no one was willing to save her. She was his first miracle case. Put him on the map, so to speak.
And it was miracle cases he preferred. Some things, yes, alright, he'd believed in impossibility once. There were cases he refused to take. (Stephen, the man could not do what Dr. Strange the neurosurgeon would have to do sometimes and tell a family that something was impossible, much less that he'd failed. He'd believed in impossible, yes, but never accepted it. He had a perfect record.) There were people who couldn't afford him. (There had been doctors they couldn't afford either, once.) Some things were inevitable. (His sister had been a healthy, functional teenager when a drunk driver had sent her to the damned emergency room in a hospital that wasn't his and she never walked out.) The cases kept coming. Impossible cases. People who no one else could save but he did. He won. He did it.
And yes, he'd liked it. Liked the money. Liked the car and the penthouse and the fame. But he never listened to people who talked to him about his supposed arrogance or superiority. Honestly, beneath it all, he didn't care about that.
His work was defying the impossible. It was defiance itself. Defying his sister's death day in and day out and it was all he had. He could do what no one else could do. He could defy death. But then… No one understood that. Not even Christine, for all that she was brilliant and that she cared so much. He'd never told her about his sister. Never told anyone and somehow, no one ever made the connection between Doctor Strange and Patient Strange all those years ago that made him famous as a neurosurgeon.
Doctor Stephen Strange put away the Eye of Agamoto not because he resisted the temptation to bring his hands back, or to bring his sister back to life after all these years, but because he needed to remember that he fought the impossible, the inevitable, fought death every day and won. He did it.