#and I almost had every resippy done

[actualsunflower]

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Oh boy am I about to talk for way too long. read on to find out the full explanation of jay’s sunflower dna and the vault 22-111 experiment. and also how he found out and how he reacted lol

thanks for asking!!

Ok so when Jay finds out he’s a mutant, he’s testing his blood to try and figure out why radiation seems to have no effect on him and how to somehow use this for the vaccine he’s trying to create (he tests his blood and a tissue sample from the inside of his cheek, just to be sure). It says he’s human, of course, but also helianthus (you know, sunflower). He’s very confused, and redoes the test a few times because that can’t possibly be right, but every time the results are the same. Since Jay did study botany, he knows of the sunflower’s radiation absorbing properties, and comes to the conclusion that that’s why it doesn’t harm him, but doesn’t understand how he could possibly have sunflower DNA. 

He starts to suspect it was something they did to him in Vault 111 while he was frozen, and they dig through all they can find in the vaults and the Vault-Tec regional HQ, as well as what they could find from the network scanner from the Institute. It’s a real gut punch when he finds out that it was not a Vault 111 experiment, but actually an experiment from Vault 22, which means this happened to him before the war, before he was frozen. 

As we know Vault 22 was creating fungus spores to infect and kill pests (as well as other things, but those things arent relevant to his mutation), but it eventually mutated and took over human hosts. One of the scientists assigned to that project was curious if they could somehow use some plant species natural ability to fight radiation to help make humans more resistant, possibly even immune to nuclear fallout. They had no more space in Vault 22, since it was full entirely of scientists, and they wanted to infect someone who was going to be exposed, someone who wasn’t going to be safe from radiation in a Vault. 

Around this time, in Anchorage, Jay and his battalion were ambushed, and everyone but him was killed. He was shot several times, and once in the head. The shot to the head is what caused Jay to completely loose his sight and, temporarily, his hearing. His hearing does return, but he’s now tone deaf and extremely hard of hearing, and has tinnitus. He was left for almost a day before he was found alive, and after receiving some medical care in Alaska, was discharged and brought to a hospital in Las Vegas. At this point he had fallen into a coma, but had already been cleared for entry into Vault 111, because they were astounded he survived and wanted to make sure he fully recovered and was frozen in the Vault. The Vault 22 scientists heard of this and proposed to use him for the sunflower DNA experiment, because according to Vault-Tec, saving space in a Vault for someone who was blind, deaf and in a coma seemed like a waste of space and was useless for any experiments. It was cleared and while Jay was in the hospital in Vegas, they preformed their experiment while he was still in a coma, planning to replaced 60% of his DNA with that of a sunflower’s. Jay woke up before they could finish however, and only replaced 38%. This was obviously enough to work, though. If they had replaced more, he would have had more visible mutations and likely eventually died from it. 

Jay never knew about this, and Nate never knew either. After Jay woke from the coma he was sent back to Boston without ever knowing that was done to him. When Jay found the records of this, and saw the dates, he was furious. He knew that was when he was in a coma, which meant they did that without his consent, and thought that Nate must have let them. He wasn’t surprised they had done it without his consent of course, but still just a furious. He had no idea that even long before the war they were using him like a lab rat. He was even more pissed because he thought Nate knew, and just never told him. Jay had a serious mental breakdown after that, and kinda relived a lot of his prewar trauma. Nick was of course very upset as well, but he didn’t believe Jay’s late husband would do something like that, and eventually talked Jay into realizing that Nate couldn’t have known either. (Father however, absolutely knew, and purposefully kept it from him. The bitch asshole.)

He eventually comes to terms with it and continues his research, using his new found knowledge of his sunflower DNA to good use. This leads Jay and Nick to go on a hunt to find some post-war sunflowers to test for their effectiveness in removing radiation. They do find some, and bring a bunch home to study.  They’re a viable replacement for his blood in the vaccine, and even on their own they can effectively remove radiation from the soil and air, so they begin cultivating them around all Minutemen and Railroad occupied settlements. The sunflowers alone aren’t enough to complete his vaccine though, and they eventually travel to Appalachia to research it more with the RadShield resippy and all the Scorched plague stuff. Whewh. That was A LOT. Thank you for reading it though, if you did.

My fic is going to be very angsty, it’s very sweet sometimes and has a lot of cute slice-of-life moments, but I mean… It’s Fallout. It’s fucked up and twisted, and Jay’s life is no exception. So just be ready for a lot of angst if you ever read it lol

#my read more didnt work wtf #jay evarhart-valentine #fallout 4 #answered ask