John had spent the intervening years, from the time that he woke up on fire in the back room of the grocery store, til the time that he spotted a painting too high up on a wall for anyone sane to have made it, scouring this part of the world for Harlow. It wasn't that he'd expected to find him alive - no, never that, he was too John for that kind of idiotic hope - but because unlike Harlow, John had scoured the remains. Unflinching, unmindful of the flames or the fact that he'd actually been on fire himself moments before, John identified the bits and pieces, the guts and the wristwatches, hairclips and bones of what remained of their pack as the flames started to lick at them, and there was no Harlow there, not a piece.
For their wild, irritating, idiotic and transfixing pack, John had mourned a little. For Harlow, he'd not so much decided as became consumed by the idea of finding his walking dead corpse, and putting it down. For something that resembled Harlow to exist and be so dull, shuffling and groaning its way across the burnt out world, was the worst thing John could think of. He would have ended it if it took til he was the last person standing in the world.
And then he'd seen that painting, and he simply couldn't understand. The only thing that could have stopped John from finding Harlow that night, had he been there to find, was death. So for Harlow to be still alive? It was betrayal that John simply couldn't wrap his head around. He hated Harlow half the time they were together, wanted to punch him in the face even more than half that time, and still there was just no way he could fathom ever willingly walking away from him if he was still breathing.
In the cell, while shouts and whispers spread around him about his own death, all John could think of was whether Harlow was still here, still where he'd painted that image. And how if and when he saw him again, he might just take his axe to him as he'd planned, undead or not. The idea of death didn't faze him, didn't even really enter into his consciousness as if by being insensible to the idea he made death not exist.
When Harlow rattled the bars like the wild thing he was - he still was, John noted while fury blinded him - he turned in the dark, still that spring-loaded, coiled movement that was like a slap. He nearly snarled with the one word that tore from him. "You."