Batwoman #4

Issue Details

Synopsis

HYDROLOGY PART 4 - ESTUARY While Maggie Sawyer and Kate Kane make love together for the first time, Bette Kane goes out on the streets of Gotham City as Flamebird by herself.   Trying to take out a Chinese Tong gang, she encounters the entity known as the Weeping Woman, who warns that she should not have come. The gang's leader is a strong, monstrous man with a hook for a hand. Flamebird is confident, and continuously brags about her superhero connections while she takes a beating from the heavy. Finally, he manages to slice through her stomach with his hook, and she collapses, confused as to how she allowed it to happen. He leaves her for dead, panting in a puddle of her own blood, pooling in the snow.   By morning, Agent Cameron Chase of the DEO discovers Flamebird's body, unconscious and bleeding heavily. Somehow, she is still alive, though. Chase orders that she be taken to a secure location for unmasking.   After saying her goodbyes to Sawyer that morning, Kate goes out that night as Batwoman. She visits a woman running an illegal medical clinic, who she knows was on duty at the morgue the night that two children were brought there. In exchange for information about them, she promises not to bust her for the illegal clinic operations. The doctor explains that the two kids were playing in a condemned boathouse and drowned. Batwoman had encountered the Weeping Woman there earlier, and nearly drowned, herself.   The mother had come to identify her children reeking of alcohol, and the doctor expects that she was deported. Her name was Maria Salvaje. Upon hearing the name, a Mexican gang member receiving treatment outbursts that Maria Salvaje is the risen dead.   After running all of Flamebird's identifiers through their database, Chase and her companions find nothing on her. Chase realizes that because she is associated with Batman, they may never find out who she is. However, one of her people reveals that he has deduced from the fact that Flamebird is a natural blonde that she is the same natural blonde who has been running around with Batwoman as a sidekick in a grey uniform. He has run tests, and the hair matches.   Agent Chase disguises herself as a nurse and approaches Flamebird on her makeshift hospital bed. She claims that the doctors have done all they can, but the injuries are too extensive, and she cannot be saved. She asks for a next of kin, or any contact who she can call to keep her from dying alone. With difficulty, Bette whispers her cousin's name: Kate Kane. Chase realizes that it can't be a coincidence, and orders that she be dumped at Gotham General Hospital to have her wounds actually treated.   Batwoman breaks into Maria Salvaje's apartment to find her drunken father there. He believes that his daughter is dead, having killed herself after failing to make herself feel better with alcohol. Knowing that she won't get any information from the man, Batwoman leaves him with his sadness.   While Kate researches occult texts, Agent Chase meets with Director Bones and apologizes for dragging him back to Gotham. He thinks nothing of it, excited to see what comes next.