Jean couldn't answer for a good half a minute, she tried to wrap her head around the question but she didn't quite manage so what she finally managed was a "What?" along with confusion radiating off of her.

 

"You can't see it, feel it constricting your mind?" Emilia asked her bewildered, her eyes were glassy, staring not at her face but at her mind.

 

Jean couldn't do that yet, she only got sensations through her telepathic senses.

 

"I can't look at my mind, the Professor said I might not be talented at it," she admitted shamefully.

 

What she didn't expect was the fury and disgust that burst out of the previously nervous cutie.

 

"What a fucking asshole, " Emilia swore, for the first time in front of Jean but she didn't seem to mind her astonishment. Looking her in the eyes Emilia said with the most seriousness she had seen from her so far,

 

"Jean, what I see when I look at your mind is terrifying," she said, she also got what she taught to her before and sent thoughts instead, *Your Psychic presence is easily the most terrifying and powerful thing I have seen in all my life.*

 

That thought was accompanied by the girl's memories and emotions as she took in her mind.

 

"I.." she started but trailed off, "What the hell."

 

She understood what the girl meant, It was like in deep space where there was only a single molecule for every cubic meter suddenly a star showed up beside you. That wasn't a perfect analogy but close enough.

 

*This is how a mind should look* Emilia followed up that thought too with mental images and how she sensed others compared to Jean.

 

She was right, others looked like tiny little worlds where their thoughts and memories were stored and were causing chaos around the mindscape. Compared to those her's was weird. Like a whole mental world was squished and compressed forcefully into a tiny little thing.

 

The matter couldn't have been this dense but this wasn't matter, this was her mind.

 

She also got snippets about what Emilia felt when she looked at her, the girl was utterly terrified of her the first time she saw her but also extremely angry at the person who did this to her, Emilia thought someone was intentionally torturing her. She wanted to help her. How cute.

 

"Why did you call this a seal?" she asked the one thing she did not understand, she got that her mind had something seriously wrong with it but she didn't see what the girl meant about a seal.

 

"You are taking this better than I expected, you didn't know about this before right?" the girl asked, a bit bewildered at Jean's seeming lack of reaction.

 

"I mean it's weird but I  don't get it why it's so bad?" she turned it into a question at the end due to the black-haired girls seething glare.

 

"You don't know what's so bad?" Jean averted her gaze, she felt the girl's feelings about her condition slam into her mind. *You are like a person that has been in agonising pain since the day they were born, not knowing how bad their situation is until the pain stops* several similar analogies followed, meanwhile, she felt the other girl's desperation rise, she wanted Jean to understand, badly.

 

Jean focused on the one ability that came naturally to her even if she loathed it while growing up, she let her Empathy suffuse deeply into Emilia, the girl suddenly stopped her rant, seeming to notice it but instead of blocking her attempts she raised her mental shields.

 

"I'm sorry I did that but I had to make sure," she said guiltily, she didn't find any emotion in Emilia that would imply her wanting to fool her or something similar. The girl was only lonely and deprived of affection, the worst thing she ever felt towards Jean was a slight jealousy but that was normal, she felt more jealousy from other mutants at the mansion every day. The girl also pitied Jean greatly, while Jean didn't like feeling patronized this felt different so she put that out of her mind now.

 

"It's fine, if you need to you can use telepathy too to make sure I mean you no harm, " the girl said. While she didn't say so, doing that would hurt her feelings, badly. Jean knew that.

 

"I'm willing to trust you, especially based on how much you are willing to trust me, " she said.

 

Emilia's previous gloomy expression brightened up.

 

"So why did you call it a seal?" Jean asked again, now fully believing Emilia was telling her the truth. Or at least the girl believed it to be the truth.

 

"Uhm can I try something?" the girl asked back instead.

 

"Sure, but what?"

 

"I want to try setting up a Mental Link between us if it's alright with you?"

 

Jean considered that if she was guessing right Mental Link referred to instead of sending thoughts like voice messages they would be on a call. With thoughts and emotions flowing both ways constantly as they wanted.

 

She nodded, "Okay, do I need to do anything?"

 

"I don't think? Wait let's try it like this," the girl said excitedly, as her eyes again glassed over, "oh I forgot you can't sense this, um can you uh, extend a tendril of your mind?" Emilia asked.

 

Jean smiled at the weird phrase but did as the girl asked, like she was sending a telepathic message but she didn't send it just pushed it out of her mind, blank, she felt it stretching and it became harder and harder. Suddenly she felt something connect to her mind.

 

*Jean, is it working?* she heard, along with nervousness spreading backwards on the channel she extended. She didn't need to expend any effort anymore to keep it up luckily.

 

*Yes, it is* she thought,

"Ah that's good, so let me show you why I think it's a seal."

 

What followed was a discussion that was hard to put into words, as it didn't use words. They exchanged mostly ideas, concepts, feelings and thoughts.

 

They sat there staring into each other's eyes while this went on.

 

After about a minute Emilia sagged in her chair, exhausted but with a happy smile on her face.

 

Jean similarly slumped backwards, only the backrest supporting her head.

 

"So if I want to put it into words it's like another telepath tried to put a normal seal on me but couldn't so instead he decided to turn my mind into a rope and proceeded to tie knots on it until it compressed down to the state it is," Jean said. Trying to put the conclusion they had come to into words.

 

"Kinda?" Emili said, propping herself up in the seat. She quickly located her cup of latte and started to sip on it.

 

"I mean it's not a rope more like a sheet of paper they had crushed into a superdense paper ball" the girl provided her dumbed-down analogy. Seeming proud of it if her expression was anything to go by.

 

Jean's gaze was locked on her. She never thought she could come to trust someone this much this quickly.

 

The previous experience made it so she now doubted the Professor, not the girl she was meeting for the second time in her life.

 

"What can we do about it though?" Jean asked, almost pleadingly. She got a taste of how Emilia experienced the world with powers similar to her own, now she started to understand how suffocated she was ever since she became a mutant. No, that wasn't quite right. She felt that free before, maybe just after she was awakened.

 

Before she met the Professor...

 

"Believe it or not you can fix it whenever you want, maybe you just need a little push," Emilia said with a smirk.

 

Jean just sent a feeling along the lines of, get on with it, through their link.

 

Emilia flinched at it, "Sorry, let's free you then, are you ready?"

 

Jean narrowed her eyes at the girl, "Explain," she said authoritatively.

 

"Your mind hasn't been damaged or altered, it's just so tied up in itself it can't get free. With a bit of push, it should fix itself. I don't know how painful or transformative that is going to be." Emilia said, radiating uncertainty.

 

"It shouldn't get worse in any case if you are right, I am trusting you, you should trust yourself a bit too," Jean said, watching as the girl straightened in her chair at the remark.

 

"What are you waiting for, push me," Jean said playfully.

 

With a deep breath, Emilia nodded, "Okay, I will do it to the count of 5 are you ready?"

 

"As ready as I can be" Jean replied, suddenly feeling nervous. It doesn't matter, this might very well change her life.

 

"1...2...3...4...5," As the girl said five Jean collapsed backwards but she didn't care.

 

Her five senses almost left her and keeping her body upright was her last concern.

 

The world opened up suddenly. Instead of the measly hundred meters in which she felt minds now she saw, smelt, felt, and heard the whole East Coast. Her telepathy became cleared, she felt like all those minds she saw were within her reach. All objects she felt, she could move, toss, break.

 

*JEAN FOCUS*, the thought smashed into her mind, circumventing all of her new mental shields courtesy of their previous links.

 

*Focus on yourself, pull in your mind, limit the area, turn down the sensations or mute them entirely*

 

Jean complied, the East Coast became only a block of New York, the thoughts became background noise, and the emotions of people she didn't want to feel became muted.

 

Finally, she felt like she could feel her fingers first, so she tried moving them. They seemed to work fine.

 

"Jean?" she heard a soft voice ask weakly.

 

She opened her eyes and saw the girl that gave her back her life, with tears running down her cheeks.

 

Jean felt torrents of emotions wash over her, both her own and the girl in front of her.

 

She stood suddenly and pulled the black-haired cutie into a hug, crushing her as much as she could.

 

She now felt emotions so much more clearly and distinctly. Everything she experienced in the years since meeting the professor suddenly felt bleak and colourless compared the how she experienced the current moment.

 

She channelled every emotion she felt at that moment through her link, and with a thought she spread her Psychic energy into the link turning it permanent.