Little Hux is already ashamed of his name when he is first shipped off to the Foundation to begin his training. At six years old he does not consider himself a baby and secretly hates his dead mother for calling him so. Hates that the silly name is all he has of her. Despite his small frame and pale skin he is not weak, not helpless or sweet as the ridiculous name implies. He is strong. He does not cry, not when he is cold or hungry, not even when he is left alone for days on end.

Despite his youth he is a serious expressionless boy. In many ways he takes after the stoic nanny droids who had been his constant and often only companions. He does not cry when he is lead from the shuttle and left on the dry tarmac unlike the other children who babble and whine and call for their mothers. Instead he is excited, determined to work hard, to prove himself, to make his father proud.

[Secretly he hopes to please his father enough to be allowed to join him at the Academy. But two years into training, he will later discover, that Arkanis is lost along with pretty much everything else. Hux wonders as he gazes up at the stars if his father had known, if maybe that was the reason why he was made to study so far away on a drab miserable planet with nothing but rain and mud. Or had he as he feared dissatisfied his father somehow?

The Hux line endures honourably, he recalls clenching his small fists turning his face towards the distant mountains. He had been small too young to really understand his father's words at the time but he recalls the warmth of his father's arms and being held for a little while. It is a small moment but one cemented somewhere deep inside his core. He thinks of his father's eyes, the blue that is reflected in his own eyes and resolves to not disappoint him again.]

He quickly discovers they do not use first names at the Foundation. His first name would have marked him right away as a target. Thankfully here he is simply Hux, cadet or boy. As a new recruit he considers it a mixed blessing. He still stands out amongst the parade line thanks to his prominent red hair and distinguished last name. But it is not as bad as it could have been. He tilts his chin up and does his best to ignore the curious stares.

There are whispers in the dark, when the lights are out and they are lying in rows of hard beds. In the dark, tales of home, of families and friends left behind are shared by young frightened boys seeking comfort in each other. First names are also exchanged like secrets. Hux does not share anything with them although his tongue burns with desire. He has heard about this budding camaraderie from his father. He wants to make friends too, to join in with their whispers but he knows that the older boys are listening in, and that these tentative alliances will not last.

He is proved right later when a small snivelling boy with dark greasy hair is killed by older ones, his so called pals using a disclosed allergy against him. Imagine your enemy is as ruthless and conniving as yourself, his father's words ring in his ears as his instructors remove the body in the morning. He contemplates the waste of cadet as they pass by, the boy had been improving as a marksman and passed the last assesment. His father recommends eliminating undesirables but Hux cannot help but think of the boy's potential. Murder should be necessary, not merely clever he thinks turning away.

They are later discouraged from murdering one another. Class sizes are small enough they are told. [When he is older he will better understand why that is, why they are made to run to suffer. Galactic misfits, outcasts hounded to the distant unknown regions. Persecuted for trying to bring order to a broken fragmented galaxy. It is not his fault, nor is it his father's that their side had lost. But it burns all the same.]

However when tutors backs are turned it remains more or less the same. The older pick on the younger, the strong against the weak. The stupid punch while the clever are more ingenious and cruel. Secrets are dredged up and used where possible for blackmail or humiliation. Despite the rules deaths still occur. But now the weak suffering for longer, the pain is drawn-out until they cannot cope any more.

Hux considers himself fortunate. He is left alone more or less. Only a few of the older ones dare, mistaking his bookishness for weakness. They quickly learn he does not start fights but ends them. Soon everyone leaves him alone. He prefers it that way using his free time to read or practise combat. Like everyone else he sleeps with a knife.

Hux does not tell anyone his first name, does not share even the smallest thread of personal for someone to choke him with. But his name is discovered eventually, in his eighth year of training. A hacked database or something similar he is lead to understand by his blackmailers. It is the same group that had conspired and killed that first year. They taunt him and make ridiculous demands. He may be a Commandant's son but that means little in exile.

He decides then staring at their smirking faces that he will not be bullied or blackmailed by anyone. He is not weak nor will he be ashamed. He is outnumbered but that does not prevent him from permanently silencing their laughter.

He washes their blood from his knives with ease and heads off to his music lesson.

Later that day he sends his father a short message. Call me Bay.

So I'm no expert but I think Hux's childhood would have been difficult especially as mid way through when he is about eight? everything would have gotten worse and they would have been exhaled and sent to the outer rim? So in this his father has kinda pre-empted that. The Foundation is meant to be similar to the Academy his father runs as well.