"Since when are you a doctor? Last I remember, you were no better than a tabloid journalist."
Tatum Katz had a rough start with the BAU. Her papparazzi-adjacent photographer being a suspect in one of their cases wasn't exactly a great first impress...
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thirty || pre-season 7, episode 22
"Smarty Pants, I've got news! I'm on my way to Tate's office!" Garcia called through the open-plan BAU workspace.
The attention was drawn of most of his coworkers and Spencer glanced around at them nervously. "And you need me?"
Penelope groaned. "You know that thing? That thing that Tate asked me to..."
Spencer's eyes widened and they could all practically see the lightbulb turn on above his head. "Oh! Yeah. Okay, I'm coming."
"That thing?" Derek quietly directed to Emily and JJ. They both shrugged, equally as out-of-the-loop as he. Morgan looked after the retreating figures of his coworkers, heading towards Tate's office. Despite Tate's obvious commitment issues, she made quick friends of Emily and JJ when they were drawn together and it was rare for her to keep things from them. When she had her issue with Spencer in L.A, she called the team. But now that he thought about it, did he even know why they stayed in L.A. after the case? Did Emily or JJ? For being surrounded by profilers, Tate was getting startlingly good at hiding things.
In another part of the building, Tate was hunched over her desk, hyper-focused on the last bit of her report for their previous case, when her door flew open. Penelope and Spencer each took one of the chairs in front of Tate's desk as the tech analyst threw a bright pink sticky note down in front of her. Tate picked it up and smiled at her friends. "What am I looking at here?"
"That, my friend, would be the address of your biological father's apartment," Garcia said.
Tate's jaw fell open and her eyes darted between Spencer and Penelope. "You're serious?" When they both nodded, Tate could do nothing more than stare down at the scrap of paper. "I'm... We have that guest speaker thing at that college tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah," Spencer said. "Do you still want to carpool with JJ and Emily?"
Tate shook her head slowly. "You go ahead and I'll meet you guys there. I have someone to go see."
<3
Since the moment the address was given to Tate, her mind had been whirling. Garcia filled in some more information to tide her over. His name was Miles Marshall and he was a geopolitical and cultural photographer for National Geographic. He spent most of his time on long-term trips across the world, taking photos to make his paycheck for the year, but his return flight was landing late on the morning of Tate's planned confrontation. As she pictured her father pushing through a busy airport, smiling politely at passing strangers, and taking off in a large plane, Tate clicked through his extensive photo galleries online.
He was talented, that much was obvious to her. Several of his photos hit home with Tate in a way she hadn't thought possible as they painted large emotion in the heat of political turmoil. There was one photo she started at for longer than she'd care to admit: a mother, father, and their daughter in South Asia, hiding out from a monsoon that was raging outside their door.
