>> How Charles managed to touch that and not inhale enough ocean to drown them both is beyond me. I can only surmise that his own fucked-up childhood left his talent with some rather bizarre safety catches.<<
My headcanon for telepaths is that they are both biologically -as soon as the stem cells begin organizing a nervous system- and psychologically resolute, a self-contained unit. It's the only way that a telepathic infant wouldn't be driven to madness by Mommy and Daddy's /random stray thoughts/. To a telpath, everyone else's thoughts have a distinct 'flavor'. Beyond being able to screen out background noise quickly, it also allows the telepath to /immediately/ recognize, isolate and insulate against external thoughts deliberately intruding into the telepath's own. ("Well, that's worth a look..." from Loki through Doctor Selvig, for example.)
Two telepaths would actively have to establish trust before they could do anything more complex than wail like a car alarm in the other's vicinity.
For the differences between a telepath and an empath, see Firefly/Serenity and the Frankenstein process that River went through. Similar processes could have been used to create a very different Black Widow, honed by psychological manipulations which are illegal under the Geneva Convention. Which, of course, both identifies and prevents torture on a global scale.
Re: Thoughts
My headcanon for telepaths is that they are both biologically -as soon as the stem cells begin organizing a nervous system- and psychologically resolute, a self-contained unit. It's the only way that a telepathic infant wouldn't be driven to madness by Mommy and Daddy's /random stray thoughts/. To a telpath, everyone else's thoughts have a distinct 'flavor'. Beyond being able to screen out background noise quickly, it also allows the telepath to /immediately/ recognize, isolate and insulate against external thoughts deliberately intruding into the telepath's own. ("Well, that's worth a look..." from Loki through Doctor Selvig, for example.)
Two telepaths would actively have to establish trust before they could do anything more complex than wail like a car alarm in the other's vicinity.
For the differences between a telepath and an empath, see Firefly/Serenity and the Frankenstein process that River went through. Similar processes could have been used to create a very different Black Widow, honed by psychological manipulations which are illegal under the Geneva Convention. Which, of course, both identifies and prevents torture on a global scale.