BIOGRAPHY - page 7
Deadpool was torn up inside by his actions, not sure whether he had done the right thing or not. He rejected Gerry's friendship entirely after learning Gerry knew the truth about the messiah and 
let Wade face it uninformed. Blind Al and Zoe mostly sided with Gerry, so Wade abandoned them all, only stopping long enough to forcibly take Monty with him, since the freakish precognitician had believed in him throughout the mission. Monty's psychic gifts had burned out fulfilling the Mithras Directive, and so he was due to be "decommissioned" by Landau, Luckman & Lake. Despite Zoe succeeding the disgraced Dixon as overboss, it was probably for the best that Monty left when he did. [Deadpool (2nd series) #31]
Wilson established a new base of operations in an abandoned castle in the Bolivian jungles. Having turned his back on most of his former friends, Deadpool threw himself back into the mercenary lifestyle. He took work from Alestaire Grunch, an old partner of Patch's from Hellhouse. He also sought out Ilaney Brukner in her hospital room in Switzerland. Feeling responsible for destroying her house in his fight with Ajax, Deadpool hired her as his new pilot to assist with various jobs. [Deadpool (2nd series) #26]
Deadpool found himself unable to move on, however. He began experiencing visual hallucinations of cartoon rabbits and a remarkably alluring woman. He started cracking up and went so far as to 
see Doctor Bong, a criminal psychiatrist (in both senses of the phrase). After realizing physical conflict was genuinely cathartic for him, Wade provoked a fight with Wolverine to help process his hallucinations. He realized the fluffy bunnies represented the people he felt he had failed in his past, brought to the surface by his controversial decision at the end of the Mithras Directive. The woman, however, was someone specific, whose identity remained just out of reach. Someone he had hurt, and forgotten, but whom he was now starting to remember. [Deadpool (2nd series) #26-27]
On his next job for Alestaire, Deadpool and Ilaney found themselves in Atlanta where they ran smack into the woman of his dreams. Literally. The woman, Mercedes, was on the run from 
Bullseye, who had been hired to kill her. Stinking of a set-up, Deadpool still couldn't let Bullseye kill Mercedes, and fought with all his heart to keep her alive. After Bullseye had been dealt with, Deadpool revealed to Monty and Ilaney why: the woman was Mercedes Wilson, his wife. [Deadpool (2nd series) #28]
According to Deadpool, Wade and Mercedes Wilson were an item long before the Weapon X Program, the cancer, and his mercenary days. In fact, he attributed her death as the instigating factor that sent him down that dark road so many years ago. Yes, her death. If it wasn't abundantly clear Mercedes was back from the dead, the houngan Black Talon arrived at the Bolivian castle to abduct Mercedes, for being such a fine example of reanimation for the zombie maker to examine. Mercedes' death was something that haunted Deadpool for years, and so he struggled with her return and explaining to her all he had done, and all that had been done to him, in her absence. Mercedes had no idea what brought her back -- her last memory was of their cabin in Maine, before suddenly being chased through Atlanta. [Deadpool (2nd series) #29]
As Deadpool's memory of that time in his life resurfaced, it and Monty's investigations seemed to 
confirm what had happened. The Wilsons lived a life of nuptial bliss in their cabin in Maine when they pulled a drowning man from the river. They thought he was an innocent logger, but the man was actually a mercenary escaping from a job gone sour. Unwilling to leave witnesses, the mercenary brutally murdered Mercedes and left Wade Wilson for dead. According to Deadpool, that mercenary was his old nemesis, T-Ray. Indeed, T-Ray seemed responsible for much that had happened. T-Ray brought Mercedes back to life, he forced Alestaire to send Deadpool on the Atlanta job so they would cross paths, and he attacked and brutally tortured Monty when he seemed to be getting too close to the truth. Yes, T-Ray was clearly the villain here. [Deadpool (2nd series) #30]
Deadpool returned to Landau, Luckman & Lake for the first time in months with Mercedes and Ilaney in order to get Monty some medical care. Overboss Culloden had hardened in their absence, however, and intended to force Deadpool to own up to his old LL&L contract. Wilson took it all in stride, but he was dismayed by the change coming over Mercedes. Learning she had not only been murdered but resurrected by T-Ray made her long to take revenge on him, and she 
tried to adopt a more hardboiled attitude to fit in with Wade's new life. Deadpool, on the other hand, didn't want her to change at all, and feared corrupting her with what he had become. When Zoe Culloden found her heart again, she freed Wade and his friends. Culloden and Monty decided to go off together, and they left Deadpool, Mercedes and Ilaney with the bodyslide equipment to travel anywhere they wanted. Deadpool and Mercedes decided to forget T-Ray and go somewhere in peace to rebuild their relationship... only for T-Ray to magically hijack the teleporter mid-jump and bring them to the site of Mercedes' death in Maine. [Deadpool (2nd series) #31]
T-Ray trapped Ilaney in her own private hell and moved Mercedes into a safe dimensional space to begin his torment of Deadpool. Passing through a series of illusory realities, T-Ray taunted Deadpool while Mercedes secretly watched from the limbo T-Ray placed her in. T-Ray asked Deadpool why he didn't recognize the beach they were fighting on, despite it being the place Wade and Mercedes Wilson honeymooned? When they went to Ilaney's hell (reliving the plane crash she felt responsible for), why was Deadpool more concerned with Ilaney than the elderly couple in the cockpit... Mercedes's parents, whom he didn't recognize? When Deadpool didn't recognize the fountain where Wade and Mercedes first met either, T-Ray let Mercedes out of limbo to ask her own questions. Why didn't Deadpool know the most basic facts about Wade and Mercedes Wilson's life together? The reason was simple: Deadpool wasn't Wade Wilson at all. T-Ray was the real Wade Wilson, and Deadpool was the mercenary they pulled out of the river. [Deadpool (2nd series) #32]
Under T-Ray's guidance, Deadpool and Mercedes remembered the full details of the drama in Maine. Deadpool was known as "Jack" back when the Wilsons pulled him from the river. Looking to assume a new identity to avoid his bosses for the job he botched, Jack spent the week snowed in with the Wilsons, charming Wade, learning as much as he could about the man's life and his marriage in order to steal it. With their similar builds and his talent as a chameleon, a small bit of arson, one survivor, some plastic surgery and "amnesia" to cover up the differences... Jack had a whole plan in place to eliminate Wade and assume his life at Mercedes' side. But when the snow lifted, Mercedes came back to the cabin early and got caught in the struggle. Jack accidentally killed Mercedes and, horrified at his plan gone awry, regressed mentally in order to cast off his failed Jack identity. From that day forth, he was known only as Wade Wilson.
As these revelations hit Deadpool, T-Ray twisted the knife with his own story of surviving Jack's attack and training to be a mercenary to one day seek revenge. He went on to learn the black arts in Japan and eventually resurrected Mercedes just to take advantage of Deadpool's twisted mind. T-Ray plan was to offer Deadpool the return of the one true love of "his" life, only to remind him she wasn't that at all. But when he tried to parade a gallery of the dead in front of Deadpool, all the people Deadpool had ever killed, he went too far. Deadpool laughed off this psychological attack, accepting wholeheartedly that he was an awful person, but he was trying to do better. Meanwhile, T-Ray was the prick who resurrected his wife and manipulated her into falling in love with her own murderer just for revenge. To T-Ray's surprise, Mercedes agreed. Using some of the black arts power T-Ray had given her, Mercedes helped Deadpool defeat her 
"loving husband" before carting him off to a nether plane. This didn't mean she had forgiven Deadpool for killing her, of course, and she left him with a swift kick to the balls before rescuing Ilaney and getting them both out of his twisted orbit. Deadpool was left to fight his way through the revenant shades of his victims, taking him to the brink of death. But, as before, Mistress Death arrived to tell him it wasn't quite his time yet, and his time on Earth would continue. [Deadpool (2nd series) #33]
[Note: So, yeah... that happened. These revelations came from Joe Kelly's final issue of Deadpool, and clearly no one had any idea what to do with it after that. It was eight years before the subject was addressed again by Marvel. This Spotlight will address the revisions later, but in short T-Ray's story appears to be bullshit: Deadpool IS Wade Wilson. Who Mercedes was married to, whether the cabin-murder scenario actually happened and to whom, though, is still murky.]
Deadpool awakened after his ordeal to find himself apparently in a laboratory inside a containment tank, where Mistress Death herself was also being held. This scenario turned out to be a ruse set up by Loki, the Asgardian God of Mischief, who claimed Deadpool was his long-lost son. [Deadpool (2nd series) #34-36] Deadpool took this claim in stride, waiting for Loki to get to the point. Loki and Deadpool arranged a scenario where Loki's hated half-brother Thor was separated from his enchanted hammer, Mjolnir. They then used trickery to make it seem as if 
Deadpool was worthy to lift the hammer, and claimed the power of Thor. "Thor-Pool" had some fun acting as a God of Thunder before kidnapping Thor's mortal form of Jake Olson for Loki. When Death started showing too much interest in the newly-mortal Thunder God, though, Deadpool helped Olson escape and lost his new hammer. Loki departed, claiming his "son" still had much to learn, and placing a curse on him saying, "let thy life fall into ruin until thou dost seek thy father's forgiveness!" [Deadpool (2nd series) #37]
Loki's curse left Wade with a magically indestructible face patterned after some actor named Thom Cruz. Even nose-diving off a skyscraper face first into the pavement didn't scratch his mug. Deadpool was oddly upset about losing his grotesque real face, realizing how much his identity was tied into his scars. The curse wormed its way through his life, cutting Wade off from his past and other ties. He found Patch had sold off Hellhouse to an unfamiliar dispatcher. He tried reaching out to Siryn by phone, only to think she was giving him the silent treatment since he didn't know she recently had her throat cut and lost her voice. His new house's facial recognition failed to recognize him, blowing up all of his stuff. Finally, he deliberately antagonized a religious death cult in an effort to restore his scars, only to walk away with a pristine face. With his costume in shreds, Wade had to rely on a "loaner" from his tailor, a bizarre mix of Spider-Man, Wolverine and Razorback. Looking for a place to live, Wade connected with a super-villain real estate broker and found himself sharing a sublet with Titania and the Constrictor. [Deadpool (2nd series) #38]
Deadpool managed to whup his new roommates thoroughly in an opening brawl, and the trio soon settled into a regular pattern of brunch, roommate squabbles around "the Dead Lounge" and death traps seeking revenge. When Taskmaster called to recruit Titania for a job, Deadpool called bull and said this was obviously a trap for him, where Titania would supposedly be captured by Taskmaster and he'd have to come save her and then they'd turn on him and blah blah blah. He offered to cut out the middle man and just step into the trap up front if Titania cut him in on the money being offered. She agreed, and he showed up at Taskmaster's crime college to get ambushed. [Deadpool (2nd series) #39]
Taskmaster continued to claim he wanted Titania for access codes she possessed to Baron Zemo's orbital weapons platform from her time with the Masters of Evil, but Deadpool wasn't having it. Once Taskmaster outlined the plan, for Deadpool and his crime college cadets to infiltrate the orbital platform and apply the access codes, Deadpool knew the cadets were secretly being ordered to kill Wilson once the codes were provided. So, once again, he charged Taskmaster for agreeing to step into the trap. Sure enough, the "Deadpool Interns" abandoned Wade in space when they were done with Baron Zemo's systems. [Deadpool (2nd series) #40] This set off a complicated series of events where Deadpool hooked up with space pirates in order to eventually hitchhike his way home. [Deadpool (2nd series) #41-43]
In their next adventure, Deadpool, Titania, and Constrictor were hired by Achebe to kidnap the leopard Preyy belonging to Erik Killmonger from Avengers Mansion, as part of his convoluted 
series of plots against the Black Panther. Deadpool posed as animal control and slipped his teleporter on the animal, but ended up having to fight through the Avengers. He and his roommates were captured, but Deadpool was teleported to freedom by Achebe to battle Killmonger, the Panther's current rival. Wade extricated himself from the situation when the opportunity presented, leaving the Black Panther, Killmonger and Achebe to continue their games alone. [Black Panther (3rd series) #23, Deadpool (2nd series) #44]
Back at the Dead Lounge, Deadpool found "Titania" waiting for him and revealed he had known all 
along she was really Copycat. Vanessa had been hired by the Taskmaster and Wingless Wizard to help get revenge on Deadpool for their old Frightful Four debacle. Vanessa insisted it wasn't personal and she was just in it for the money, so Wade cut the access code for his bank account into her face. Unfortunately, the Wizard wasn't willing to accept defeat, and the Dead Lounge was destroyed in an explosion.
Deadpool blamed Loki's curse, for he once again found himself homeless, nearly penniless and cut off from his latest support system. He went to a bar to drown his sorrows, but was confronted by a gruff older stranger over him bogarting the peanuts. Wade snapped back at the old guy, who 
stood his ground and told Wilson that your problems aren't my problems and are you really going to start something over peanuts in a bar? Wade relented and apologized to the guy for being a dick. They shared the peanuts and shook hands before Wade took off. As he walked down the street, Wade soon realized his "Thom Cruz" face had reverted back to its regular scarred visage. Remembering the wording of Loki's curse, he wondered if the old guy had actually been his real father, who ran out on him and his mom when he was young. Deadpool rushed back to the bar, but by then the man was gone. [Deadpool (2nd series) #45]
[Note: As referenced in the beginning, this story contradicts various other accounts of Deadpool's parents, their current situation and his recollection of them.]
Somehow, Deadpool eventually learned of Siryn's damaged throat and he reached out to his underworld contacts for a cure. He was approached by the Administrator of the Watchtower, an organization skilled at genetic manipulation and other advanced treatments. The Administrator 
wanted Wolverine captured and/or killed in order to gain access to his healing factor for research. In exchange, he would use the healing factor to restore Siryn to full health. Wade agreed, and oversaw Watchtower operatives the Scourge as they confronted and defeated Logan. Back at the Watchtower, the Administrator was true to his word and Theresa's throat was fully healed up, restoring her powers. She was grateful to Wade for what he did for her, but was upset when she learned he betrayed Logan to make it happen. Still, she and Deadpool were reunited and escaped together as Wolverine stayed behind to confront the Administrator. [Wolverine (2nd series) #154-155]