: Hood ordered him to rest. Chief said no and kept on fighting for humanity.
: I'd hardly call that AWOL.

: That's like your boss telling you you have a day off, but you say you'll come
: in and work for free on that day anyway. Why would you boss be angry or
: send a hit squad after you?

: I don't think Chief goes AWOL until the events of Halo 5, or maybe shortly
: before.

Man, I just said that I think there's much more to it than that. :P

I don't really think that's how it works, anyways. Even in a work environment, not many employers would be happy to see you working yourself to exhaustion. For one thing, they'll have to pay you for your time. And the other, your mental health is in jeopardy. You start to get sloppy. Which is certainly the case with John. Hood cares for John, and he's concerned about the way years of non-stop war and the death of Cortana will affect him. He deemed it imperative that he takes time off, and he completely disobeyed that order. The end of that Escalation comic sure made it seem like that was the point that he just started going off and doing his own thing with Blue Team. I imagine that this was just the start of his descent.

Besides, I was responding to the possibility that he was labeled a traitor because he disobeyed Del Rio's orders (which I don't think has any bearing on his current situation).