v. Ocean
She gets shot the night that he asks her to move back to the States with him. Because that's just how it goes; isn't her life so funny? She would laugh, as if she found any humor in it. She finally finds a man she is genuinely interested in, genuinely compatible with, and of course it would be while she's on an undercover mission.
The shot is just a through-and-though in her upper thigh, missing her femoral artery by inches and doing nothing but inconveniencing her. She argues when her handler Michael tells her that she can't go back to her bungalow, can't go back to Aaron, because goddammit Emily you have a fucking fresh bullet wound. She can't even walk without using a crutch and even that is with intense pain, so any hopes of undetected escape from her security detail are dashed, and she's been really good at escaping security details since her childhood.
Her mission is over. Terrorists are dead. The good guys won yet again, thanks to the intel that she gathered undercover at the bar and her sharp shooting even while she's bleeding out on a terrorist's floor and the perfect timing of the tactical team bursting through the doors to take out any threats before they can take her out.
But none of that seems to matter when she gets on the plane back to London. As she flies over the Atlantic Ocean, all she sees is Aaron's face. There's only a sliver of moonlight and the waves below her look black. She wants to get swallowed up by the ocean.
None of this is fair. But she does what she does best and compartmentalizes this part of her life as something glorious and perfect and untouchable. She moves on. Or at least tries to. She fails, actually.
Her success in the St. Lucia mission gets her a hefty pay raise and a few weeks of leave time so that her leg can heal. She spends most of it trying to learn everything she can about Aaron. She'd known his last name since their first morning together when he chuckled nervously and said he'd never done this before and made a joke about how he didn't even know her last name. She still isn't sure why she gave him her real last name, but he gave her his last name too and she utilizes that information liberally on her leave. She's in the intelligence gathering industry, and she really uses her skills.
She learns about his offer at the Behavioral Analysis Unit probably before he does and she lets out a curse. The BAU handles terrorism cases every once in awhile. So does her Interpol black-ops anti-terrorism unit. The only hope is that her cases don't take her to the U.S.
She doesn't think she can face him again.