Siryn's first romantic attachment was to Jamie Madrox, aka Multiple Man, while they lived at Muir Island in the X-books published in the 80s. I hope you'll forgive my vagueness, as that era was a bit before my time as a comics reader (I was born in 1980 and started reading comics in 1993), but I don't know precisely when and where their relationship began, or exactly when and under what circumstances it ended, but they were definitely together for some time. If you want to see some canon of them together, I can recommend the Fallen Angels LS (8 issues), in which Theresa and Jamie are recruited to bring a runaway Sunspot home to the New Mutants and get caught up in an adventure with a motley array of other superhumans. The fatal flaw in their relationship was that the Jamie Madrox who loved Theresa was not the central Madrox, but a renegade dupe, back in a stage at which his dupes were not usually inclined to become renegades. Now, in the new X-Factor series, Jamie has an unknown number of dupes running around doing Tallulah-knows-what, some of whom are less than pleased to be reabsorbed, including an ordained minister with a wife and toddling son. At this point, there would be nothing unusual about Jamie creating an independent-spirited dupe who went off and romanced a woman the original didn't know from Eve, but it didn't happen so often back then.
Fast-forward to years later in canon time, and their relationship was briefly addressed in the pages of X-Force during the X-Cutioner's Song, when Siryn (stuck in a holding cell in the Xavier Institute) confronted Multiple Man about their past together. He explained that, since her relationship was with a duplicate of himself, but not the central personality, he remembers what they did together, but the emotional attachment she shared with her Jamie wasn't there. Now, if he could remember their relationship, that means the renegade dupe had either been reabsorbed into the original, or had died by that time. (And can I just say that I'm now older, wiser, less emotionally invested in the X-books, and have recently read a lot more of that crossover, and I STILL think the X-Men's and X-Factor's treatment of X-Force was a load of bullshit? Props to Polaris, at least, for having the decency to be ashamed of the whole scandalous affair. But I digress.) Theresa was rather hurt to hear of Jamie's lack of attachment to her, and didn't want to discuss the matter anymore, the point being that their relationship was over and done before she joined X-Force.
We'll get back to Jamie Madrox later.
When she joined X-Force, Siryn became friends with another James: Proudstar (I'm sensing a name pattern here), aka Warpath. I don't know precisely when Fabian Nicieza first wanted us to see the signs of Warpath's attraction to Siryn, but the first evidence I recall is in the early 20s of X-Force from the early 90s, when James remarked that he was "looking" while Theresa was getting a rare tan from the ferocious Arizona sun. In #25, he asks, "Your pretty blue eyes see anything yet?" for another example. (This remark is also much of the reason why I'm not yet ready to see Siryn as necessarily green-eyed, despite the majority of colorists rendering her that way. Not all redheads have green eyes, thanks for asking! But again I digress.) The romantic storyline was brought to a more emotional level in the following issue, in which we see Theresa drunk and Cable confronts James about his feelings for her. Thus issue #26 gave us two characterization points: that Theresa had a drinking problem, and James was romantically inclined towards her.
James initiated a conversation with Theresa in issue #29 in which he called her out on her drinking, and told her he liked her--a lot. This particular interaction didn't end well, but then she sobered up and responded very sensibly to James's overtures: she asked him to come to Ireland with her while she got herself together. She asked to show him Cassidy Keep. The story that followed, of course, was #31, in which James accepted the unenviable position of trying to open up the lines of communication between her and Black Tom and trying to detach Theresa from her dependence on alcohol. At the end of two weeks, both of these things happened at the same time, and I think the way the writers handled her quitting was both moving and very true: James didn't make her do anything. He didn't even "help" her, per se, to give up the bottle. She made that decision after a conversation with Black Tom, based on a sudden self-awareness that resulted from examining her cousin's behavior. James's role in her quitting was, essentially, that he told her she was good enough to stop hurting herself, and that participation was meaningful enough to her that, when talking to Michael Whitecloud months later, Theresa attributed her sobriety to James.
But where did their relationship go from there? The experience at Cassidy Keep strengthened their friendship, but romance wasn't in the cards. They were very close friends, and Theresa was accepting of James's affection, but her behavior suggested a certain ambivalence towards romance. The reason for this ambivalence probably had most to do with the editors' and writer's priorities for the X-Force series, but on a character level, it's hard to say. So soon after kicking her drinking habit was probably not a conducive time for starting a relationship; she may have been uncertain about her own readiness for true love, or unsure about her feelings for James, or a combination of both, but that much is a matter for speculative interpretation. She certainly liked him, at least as far as friendship was concerned; she trusted him implicitly, but she was not prepared to answer the question of romance between them.
At some point in the continuity between issues 31 and 42 was the 2nd Deadpool limited series. That was Siryn's first time fighting alongside the mercenary Deadpool (Wade Wilson), who I'm sure needs no introduction to the majority of visitors to this site. When Siryn appeared on the scene, Deadpool was very prompt and very straightforward in expressing his attraction to her. (I recall the phrase "hubba-hubba" being used as a noun.) Siryn was, at first, not amused at this attitude and rejected his advances outright. As the struggle with Black Tom and Juggernaut continued, both of their attitudes changed. Deadpool became less crude towards Siryn--in fact the battle brought them to a point at which he was seriously and openly ambivalent about being on her side. In the conversation that followed, Siryn tried to get a look at Deadpool's hideously disfigured face under his mask, but Wade was having none of that. The interaction, either way, marked a change in how they related to each other. Deadpool later told Theresa his real name. When she got a chance to see his face, she first recoiled, but then responded in a way that Deadpool wasn't accustomed to getting from a normal-looking person: she not only apologized, but touched his face. She then became not only an attractive woman to him, but a kind one. Against her initial expectations, and very much against the advice of her father, Theresa had bonded with Wade, and thus became a unique part of his life.
Their interaction at the end of the LS was a far cry from expressing romantic interest, but the development was accomplished: another romantic storyline was now open.
Not long in continuity after that, something happened that represented a monkey wrench thrown into the Siryn/Warpath works: after the Age of Apocalypse crossover, X-Force's operating model was changed to a subordinate and dependent position to the X-Men, and Sam Guthrie was moved to the Blue Team, (Excuse me: *eyeroll*) which meant the team needed a new Deputy Leader. Siryn filled this position, and in fact she attained the position by completing a mission that Deadpool helped her escape, but we'll get to that later. She took her new job seriously, but her treatment of Warpath suffered accordingly. He was smitten with her as ever, but her response to him was confusing. Her behavior upon returning to the Xavier Institute basically sums it up: she went to him first--and James's delight at seeing her again, as portrayed in Jeph Loeb's square-peg-meets-round-hole writing and Adam Pollina's comically inept art, was a sight to behold--but then brushed him off after about five seconds for her meeting with Professor X and Cable. His disappointment was a sight to behold, too.
Her attitude towards him in the time that followed, from issues #47-53, was mainly off-panel but obvious enough to the other characters that Domino would shortly thereafter call her out for waiting too long to respond to Warpath's attention, and Meltdown would later tell Theresa she was "a little late" to take an interest in James of a romantic nature. She wasn't unpleasant to him, but careless. She had some time for him, but little attention span: the best way I can sum it up was that she had come to take his place in her life for granted. The change in the picture began in issue #51, when someone lured Warpath off to a junkyard on another island. While he waited for someone to appear, musing briefly that he'd hoped it was perhaps Siryn playing a game, something nearby exploded, and after the ensuing violence, a hot young woman hand-sprung out of the wreckage, kissed James, and told him not to forget Risque.
James was attacked by the immortal Selene during a battle in #53, and in the off-panel activity between issues, he was, somehow, rescued by Risque, who took him home to Florida and nursed him back to health. I suppose you can imagine they grew very close during that time. Siryn, meanwhile, speaking in #54-55, was no longer inattentive, but preoccupied with James having gone missing, while her teammates (read: Domino) told her to get over herself. Meanwhile, James was enjoying his time off from fighting evil by frolicking with Risque, and not terribly inclined to return to X-Force.
Now let me take you back to the mission that got Siryn the leadership job. Deadpool helped her escape from the Weisman Insitute for the Criminally Insane, but on the way out, the telepath Gamesmaster got in the way, kidnapping Deadpool and altering Siryn's memory, so for the next several issues, she was unaware of what had happened. In #56, she remembered. She went back to the Institute, along with Shatterstar, and sprung Deadpool out after running an obstacle course of hilariously bizarre but nonetheless effective telepathic illusions. In the ensuing struggle with Gamesmaster, Siryn made it clear that she did not respond well to seeing Wade's thoughts and memories being used in such a manner.
The next two issues, however, were part of the Onslaught crossover, and that brought Warpath back to Westchester to help out his friends, with Risque in tow, and there was no doubt that Siryn was pleased to see him. However, Risque did a bunk while most of X-Force was unconscious and Siryn struggled to revive them, and so when he woke up, James was seriously alarmed to see that Risque was missing. He was accordingly hostile to Theresa while worrying about where Risque had gone, and so for a brief period, the emotional tables were apparently turned.
X-Force had other things to do, however (and the Shatterstar storyline keeping them occupied at the time was astoundingly bizarre and pointless), and James soon forgot his alarm at Risque's absence and his anger at Theresa. Risque turned up in #65, and James made an admirable attempt at playing with her while still being Siryn's friend, but when Siryn saw them together, she was undeniably jealous, despite her best efforts to the contrary. Risque told James her real name (Gloria Munoz) on that day, but also showed her true colors at the end of the issue when she drugged James into unconsciousness, and in the next installment, James was missing from the team again, but this time Siryn knew with whom he'd last been seen. She led the team on a trip, with the assistance of Caliban's tracking skills, to capture Risque--and when I say "capture," of course Siryn meant "nail her ass to the wall"--and recover James. Siryn was, let's say...enthusiastic, in her pursuit, so when Risque ended up in Siryn's line of view, she was had. Munoz was in the employ of the mutant Sledge, who'd assigned her to bring Warpath to him for a job Sledge needed done, so she had taken hold of him by seducing him. It proved an effective strategy, of course, but when James woke up, he was not amused. I mean, he was seriously pissed. There was a very effective portrayal of James's emotions regarding his affair with Gloria in #71, with just a few panels of JFM's sure-footed writing and Adam Pollina's visibly matured (and better-inked) art, but I digress. When Risque tried to explain that she really cared about James, only she'd owed Sledge a favor, James didn't want to hear it, and the look on Siryn's face (I don't know whether to blame JFM or Pollina) basically said, "And don't let the door hit your bitch-ass on the way out."
Some time soon after, Siryn had an adventure with Deadpool in his new monthly series, when he was having problems with his healing factor and was led to believe Black Tom was messing with him. The adventure concluded with a very moving scene in which Siryn talked Deadpool out of killing the doctor who'd originally created the healing factor that saved Wilson's life but also forced him to wear a mask full-time. She reined in Wilson's violent tendencies by reminding him of the good in himself. This marked an important--and fateful--development in the romantic storyline between Siryn and Deadpool. Their bond was characterized by her ability to bring order and calm out of his psychological chaos. She was his therapist on call, a stabilizing influence in his life.
She had also become a much better friend to Warpath. Before she saw Deadpool again, the X-books went through the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover, and during that time, Warpath brought the Vanisher back to Earth for Sledge. His compensation was the home address of Michael Whitecloud, an old friend of his brother's and the only other surviving member of their reservation. After the events of Zero Tolerance, Cable cut ties with X-Force and they temporarily became an itinerant and impoverished team. Siryn accompanied Warpath on his road trip to meet Michael Whitecloud, but on the way, they made a stop at the Field of Dreams, shown in Deadpool #12.
Deadpool was going through a rough patch, and losing his grip on self-control, fearing for his sanity and stability. He sought Siryn's help, therefore, to get him back on an even keel. He decided to reach her, however--I suppose this was evidence of his deteriorating judgment--by first approaching James, who was not amenable. In case you doubt my impartiality in saying that Deadpool then started a fight with James, the on-panel action went as follows: Deadpool said, "Sorry about the shirt; it looks new," flipped a switch or something in his hand, and next thing we see is James flying across the Field of Dreams in the middle of a fireball. Hand-to-hand combat (or rather foot-to-nether-regions) ensued, in which Siryn intervened by screaming at Deadpool. She demanded an explanation, and after a bit of sniping over James's part in the fight, Deadpool asked Siryn for her assistance.
By that point, she, too, was not amenable. Thoroughly unamused with Deadpool's behavior, she told him to go clean up his own mess and started to walk away. Deadpool made it worse by grabbing her and trying to force her to stay and help him. She was even less amused with this, and their friendship was cooked. To make an understatement, the day did not end well for Wade.
Siryn continued on to Michael Whitecloud's hotel in Nebraska with Warpath. It was going to be a tense, emotionally unsettling meeting, and they both knew it, so while James gestured towards going it alone, Theresa mentally vowed to show him the same support he had given her. Whitecloud was helpful in answering James's questions about the massacre of Camp Verde, but paid for his honesty with his life, when a device his captors had planted in his head exploded, spraying the room and James with his brain matter. In this traumatic moment, and the pursuit of further answers that followed, Theresa was there for James. She showed that she could be his rock, his steadying presence, that she could pull him through his dark times as well as he'd done for her. The path from Whitecloud led them to Dr. Edwin Martynec, who ambushed Warpath and Siryn, took them prisoner, and revealed that Stryfe had ordered the massacre as part of a cover-up.
The battle culminated in Martynec injecting Warpath with a drug that induced a heart attack, killing him just as Theresa was breaking out of the bonds--and using her sonic power in a new way--to come to his aid. She responded to Martynec's action by letting rip with the Sonic Scream to End All Sonic Screams, wrecking his lab and turning Martynec into a pile of broken bones, but the damage was done: he had killed Warpath. So ended X-Force #73, and in #74, Warpath found himself in Hell battling the spirit of Stryfe. Back on Earth, Siryn made her best efforts to revive Warpath by CPR, while verbally recounting the times he'd been there for her and how she couldn't imagine what her life would be without him. A notable quote was, "I'm not ready to let you go." James could hear her voice from Hell, and it helped keep him going in the battle with Stryfe. X-Force soon arrived with help from an Asgardian, who vanquished Stryfe and sent James's soul back to his body on Earth. He said that Theresa's voice was like a lifeline to him while he fought for his soul. In the next issue we heard some musings from Theresa about how James's brush with death had made her realize how much he meant to her.
Sounds like romance is surely on the way, right? Of course not; that would require Siryn to stay on the team and in the book for the long haul. X-Force #90 had Feral attack Siryn by slashing her vocal chords, leaving her both powerless and voiceless, and the prognosis from her doctors was not optimistic. In the next issue, Siryn decided to leave the team. After spending the entire day wandering around the city, flirting with suicidal ideation and even buying liquor for the first time in two years. She resisted the temptation to drink, but she understandably concluded that her time as a mutant adventurer was done. Late at night she returned to headquarters and--like her return to the mansion after escaping the Weisman Institute--she went straight to James's room. She showed him a letter explaining that she had to leave and figure out what to do with her life. She didn't even stay long enough to see her father, visiting from Massachusetts.
Theresa left to go live with her cousin Victoria Donnelly, and her friendship with James was relegated to the occasional email correspondence. That was Deadpool's time to shine. He found out, incidentally, of her injury, and he got her put back together again. Her got ahold of Theresa, kidnapped Wolverine, and put them both in the custody of the Watchtower, who used Wolverine's healing factor to heal the damage to Siryn's vocal chords. The procedure was dodgy on both sides: Deadpool must have captured Theresa when she was unconscious, or mind-controlled, or somehow mentally incapacitated, because she was surprised when she woke up in the laboratory and found she could scream again, and you can imagine she was pleased, too. She wasn't exactly comfortable, however, with the kidnapping of Wolverine, but to look at what followed, she wasn't that uncomfortable.
Siryn appeared again in Deadpool #56, and this time, she wanted romance. She called his apartment, reached his answering machine, and asked him to meet her at the Botanical Gardens. The problem at that time was that Deadpool's psychotic ex-girlfriend, the shapeshifter Vanessa, was back in his life and wanted his undivided attention. She heard the message from Theresa and showed up at the Gardens in Deadpool's form. While Theresa wanted to go duck behind some potted plants or something and make out, Vanessa/Deadpool responded by belittling Siryn and beating her up. A tearful, indignant and bandaged Siryn later showed up at Deadpool's apartment while Vanessa insulted her from her true form. Theresa didn't respond to Vanessa but bitch-slapped Deadpool and walked away, with neither she nor Deadpool aware of what had actually happened.
(Now just excuse me for a minute: *EYEROLL*EYEROLL*EYEROLL*)
But either way, at least Siryn was back in the saddle. I'm not sure whether she ever found out it was actually Vanessa who beat her up, or if Deadpool learned of Vanessa's meddling, but neither of them appear to be hung up over it anymore. The last time Siryn saw either Deadpool or Warpath was in 2005: she was not included in the X-Force limited series of 2004, which I hear was rather apathetically received, anyway, but she and Cannonball got to do their part in the Enema of the State storyline in the devilishly funny Cable & Deadpool #15-18. What more can a long-time X-Force fan ask than major X-Force characters showing up in the same book as Deadpool, as written by Fabian Nicieza, in which Deadpool describes Cannonball's mutant ability as "rocket-power farting powers"? Deadpool's attraction to Siryn, by then, was still usable for entertainment value, such as Deadpool's reference to Terry's clothes coming off in the context of fighting in mud or chocolate pudding. Using exposition, Deadpool described their relationship thus: "Me an' Terry, we got some history. I pretty much loved her, which, coming from me, is saying a lot. Part of me wants to bag this Cable-hunt thing and go to Great Adventure with her. Bring that weird old dancing bald guy, too. The other part of me just wants to fight 'til someone's face looks like DeNiro in Raging Bull." He later describes it as, "Me an' Terry had a sorta thing going on once. Sort of," while Theresa is asking him to put her down after having caught her from a teleportation landing, while his hand is sliding toward her rump. Now, compare that "Could you put me down?" panel in Cable & Deadpool #18 to a similar scene with Warpath in X-Force #39, to see Nicieza's Madd Recycling Skillz. Anyway, the emotional tension of the early Deadpool monthly appears to have been left in the past, and the events of #56 forgotten, which is fine by me, because Siryn's behavior during her attempted "date" with him was so maddeningly out-of-character and the ending so unsatisfying that I don't know exactly what they were trying to accomplish in producing that issue at all.
That was the last time Siryn got anywhere near Deadpool--Warpath, too, for that matter, and the romantic storylines with both of them are now inactive. Siryn got a regular place in a new monthly series when she joined X-Factor Investigations, the detective team created by Jamie Madrox in the wake of the mutant Decimation, and is now seen every month in the new X-Factor series. This means she's on a team with Jamie Madrox--this time, the real one--and she usually gets along with him very comfortably. Wackiness ensued in the off-panel events between issues 9 and 10, when Jamie got really drunk--and let's face it, that has to be bad news in any storyline concerning Siryn--and slept with Theresa, while an unexpected duplicate seduced Monet in the same night, who thought she was sleeping with the original. Well, part of the problem was that Jamie woke up with a hangover and after he reabsorbed the Libido Unleashed dupe, he couldn't be entirely sure of what had happened. The original slept with Theresa, and the dupe slept with Monet, or maybe the dupe did them both, etc. Siryn, for her part, was pleased as punch and thought that her relationship with Jamie was back on, only this time with the real Jamie, the one who wasn't temporary and disposable. She spent several issues thinking she had a boyfriend again, while Monet went on thinking she, too, had a relationship in the works with Jamie, with neither girl the wiser.
The team sat down with Dr. Samson for a bit of psychiatric evaluation in issue #13, and after the good doctor had seen both Theresa and Monet, he alerted Jamie to the fact that they were both going to find out eventually. So Jamie, reluctantly, told Theresa and Monet about the simultaneous hook-ups, and it did not go well. Monet threw Jamie out of a window, while Theresa refused to talk to him except in whispers, lest she should lose control and raise her voice. Jamie, for his part, was relatively unhurt from the defenestration, but distressed over the reactions from both women. Layla Miller goaded Theresa and Monet into getting over their resentment of each other, and they've since left their anger at Jamie by the wayside. However, neither of them was going to be Jamie's new girlfriend any time soon. OR WAS SHE?
Meanwhile, little did either Theresa or Jamie know that while the wackiness ensued, Theresa, in her own words at the confessional, "got [herself] knocked up with Jamie's child." Her getting pregnant is one thing, but while she tried to tell him about it, in issue 29, Monet alerted Theresa to the fact that she was (still) in love with Jamie. I'm afraid I'm with Terry on this one: "Aw, bugger."
This explains, then, why Terry was so eager to think their one-night stand meant their "former relationship" (let's keep in mind it was a dupe who romanced her in the first place) was back on. It also explains why she was so quick to defend Jamie's fatherhood potential to Monet in 28. ("He might surprise you.") That would have been alarming enough, but the really disturbing part of the issue was the direction she took in her second attempt to tell Madrox about the pregnancy. She still thinks he's a hottie and slept with him without contraception; fine, it's done, she's dealing with it. She wants to keep the baby; fine. She acknowledges she's still carrying a torch for Jamie after all? Okay, accepted. But, the way she was about to suggest to Jamie that he abandon the whole Mutant Defenders gig and run off with her to raise their sproglet in domestic familial bliss? Didn't bode well. Which is not to say that was about to happen in the comics. Here I will introduce the theory of Occam's Ballpoint, which states that the simplest scenario in an ongoing work of fiction is the one most likely to be carried out. We've heard enough about the future to know that Siryn will still be in the book when the SCM is born, and PAD has major plans for that birth, and the simplest way to make that arrangement possible is to keep Siryn on the team for at least the duration of her pregnancy. And as of X-Factor #33-34, that is clearly the case. She's on desk duty, which is entirely sensible, but she's still doing her part.
Theresa's enduring affection for Jamie, however, introduces another layer of hilarity (and I use that word in PAD's usual tone for it) to the new direction of X-Factor. I said earlier that I'd rather see her have a kid with a guy who really loves her, and preferably who really loved her before accidents happened, and while I have gotten excited about the SCM, I still note that she didn't exactly conceive her Sproglet in the context of a mutually loving relationship. The hilarity comes not from the fact of the pregnancy so much as the foreshadowing of Jamie's eventual marriage to Layla Miller. If Jamie wants to marry Layla while Terry has his baby, that's one thing, but if Terry is having his baby AND still loves him, while he's getting married to Layla, that could get very messy indeed. Where does it leave her, exactly, if Jamie is destined for Layla while Terry has his baby? That question isn't quite so urgent if Terry feels, "Yeah, it was nice for a while, but I ain't going anywhere near that again!", but that condition does not apply. Just where does the Miller-Madrox marriage (now say that three times fast) leave her? She spent the better part of the nineties as the center of a Love Triad between Warpath and Deadpool, ultimately seeing the merits of both but getting involved with neither, nor seeing a satisfactory resolution to either storyline, and now she's going to be one of the "legs" or another Love Triad? It doesn't bother me to know she's going to end up on the "losing" side, but how long is it going to take? With the way Marvel's waffled with her love life potential in the past 14 years, I think I have reason to be nervous.
Ultimately, I was happy to receive my copy of X-Factor #29 on Thursday, but not entirely impressed with what I found inside. Far more than 28, it was very much a "transition" issue, introducing a new storyline but establishing nothing except that Guido doesn't have a job offer. I liked Monet ("You're practically hemorrhaging IQ." Hee.), but Siryn just didn't show the sort of bite and snap that I've come to expect from PAD's portrayal of her.
Now that I've ignored the website for several months and X-Factor has marched on some more, we know now that Madrox figured out the SCM, and the way the team reacted when the news came out was very cute. We're still not entirely clear, though, on the status of Terry and Jamie's relationship. Are they sharing a bed? Do they consider themselves a couple? Do they have a name to put on their relationship? Seeing how Terry is perfectly comfortable making Jamie feel guilty about getting her knocked up, I will tentatively assume, therefore making an Ass of U and Me, that they consider themselves a couple. For now, at least. (I asked PAD if they were together for sure, but he didn't answer.) Which still doesn't put to rest the foreshadowing of the Miller-Madrox marriage. (Should I just go ahead and call that the MMM? The M3?) It doesn't really answer the question of where it'll leave Terry when that foreshadowing comes to fruition. She is apparently being looked after right now, which is better than what I expected after reading 29, but still. Can't we ever see Terry, for once, looking at a relationship that isn't preordained for drama and disappointment? I know she isn't our Terry if she doesn't chow down on a heapin' helpin' of Angst Pie once in a while (speaking of which: where does she stand on Banshee these days? Well?), but is it too much to ask that, after all the romantic mud she's been dragged through, can she just have a promising relationship for a little while? For once?
