in all the previous drafts of deep six, it's always lev or sevens who kills the gang's assassin leader guy, often in a sense that it's "for" chance, who was arguably the most abused/objectified by the guy, but it's never been chance himself. but there have been a couple characters who remind me a lot of chance and who DO get a moment of real catharsis and now........ i don't know! on one hand it would be SO satisfying to let chance finally seize his own agency and put that part of his life behind him with his own hands. but on the other hand it's soooooo Like Him that chance would prioritize his own security up to and past the point of freeing himself from his situation and only after the act was done by someone else would he realize that that could have been him. he could have done that. but he was afraid. he was so afraid, not of being hurt but of being hurt in new and unfamiliar ways, that he let go of that opportunity. I DON'T KNOW, i have and apparently always will have thoughts and feelings about chance's agency and i never know what to do with them!!!
and i don't want it to be taken that i think chance is cowardly or that he is Wrong for being afraid, because he was like. comprehensively abused and groomed. he IS a coward and a shithead and kind of a garbage sibling but that's like. that's the point. there is Nothing else he could have been. the sadness of a version of his story where, even when he is handed the gun and helped to aim it, he can't finish it because he's so afraid of what would happen if he still somehow fails, is not that he's a Bad Person but that he has been trained out of seeing a way out. it's not that he should have somehow Been Better but that he was ever put in that position at all.
and also i cannot emphasize enough that he's a shithead. he's a mean selfish little coward who would sell you to satan for one corn chip. i can't guarantee that none of that would have been there had it not been for the abuse. it wouldn't be nearly as bad tho! that's on them!