Three days. It has been three days since Emily landed in Paris to start her new life… if you could even call it that. Three days of hypervigilance. Three days of panic attacks. She can't eat. She can't sleep. She can barely leave the apartment. And to make things worse, the apartment was only partially furnished, so Emily had spent the past few nights sleeping on a particularly uncomfortable couch. On top of the pain from her stab wound and her brand, she now had a kink in her neck the size of the Eiffel Tower.
A rumble of thunder snaps Emily from her thoughts. Suddenly, she makes a plan: find an Ikea and buy herself a real bed. With the rain as a deterrent, there would be much fewer people out and about. And, hopefully, stressing out over the layout of her apartment would keep her mind preoccupied.
Two hours later, Emily returns with a bed and a bookcase. Admittedly, it has been a while since she had put together a piece of furniture, but she's Emily freakin' Prentiss. What's a little bookcase, right?
Wrong.
If she thought her neck was sore from sleeping on that couch, she wasn't ready for how sore her back was after leaning over the pieces of wood and screws for so long. The damn parts just won't fit together, and the supplied diagrams are useless. She is so exasperated and so fed up that without thinking she picks up her phone and dials Morgan's number to ask him for help.
"Morgan." Derek answers his phone, and immediately, Emily realizes what she's done. She quickly hangs up the phone, but she's frozen to her spot. She's so distraught; it hits her all at once. The one thing she wants to do right now is ask Morgan for advice. Hell she would love for him to tease her about not being able to put together a stupid little book case. But no. "Emily Prentiss is dead," repeats over and over in her head, echoing the mantra she used only a few weeks prior. She's supposed to be dead. Derek thinks she's dead. Not only is she all alone but no one even knows she's alive. JJ knows of course, but she's back in Afghanistan and completely unreachable.
Emily doesn't know what to do, but she feels like she's been crying for weeks-ever since Hotch told her about her new life. She doesn't have any tears left to cry; that only leaves anger. She hurls the rest of the book case pieces at the wall and storms out of her apartment, slamming the door behind her.
Meanwhile, Morgan just stares at his phone. For the next few weeks, every time he gets a call from an unknown number he hopes it's Emily. Logically, he knows that it can't be. She's dead. He carried her casket and helped lower her into the ground. But there's still that part of him that hopes and prays that this isn't real. Whenever his phone rings he desperately wishes it was Emily inviting him to drinks or needing his help with something around the house. But he knows that it's not, and it never can be. It doesn't stop him from thinking it's her, though. And sometimes, it is. Sometimes Emily misses hearing her friend's voice so much she'll call just to hear him say hello or hear his voicemail. After a few months, though, Derek gets tired of the hang-ups and blocks the number. Emily knew it would have to end eventually but that doesn't make that day any easier. Now, the only thing that gets her though each day is her standing date with Cheetobreath playing online scrabble.