It is only a staggered moment of alarm, but it is enough. Rush's back arches despite the pain flowering in his ribs, wiry shoulders pressing against the flat concrete as the hand around Fring's throat constricts further. Fring wrenches in his grip, catching the hand burying its thumb into his eye, and his attention is divided.

Rush's knee jerks up to catch the man in his midriff and, with the remaining adrenaline still sparking his system, he flips them both over so Fring is beneath him. Rush frees his wrist to strike at his face in a twisted reversal of what the man once did to him before, repeatedly, vicious and silent, because Fring held him and kept him contained and should have killed him then, when that was an avenue available to him, because Rush's sunken, burning eyes glare relentlessly into his and seek out the dark and terrified instinct, and with brutal finality he slams his other hand around Fring's throat and applies a ruthless, agonizing pressure.

And holds it.

And holds it.

And holds it.