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If you were to ask Rey what she was working on, and building, and gathering together, and studying for, she'd tell you about reimagining how the Force works, and she'd get that bright and excited look in her eyes, explaining how it's not about dark and light, and it's not about creating some exclusive enclave of super-powered Force Warriors bound in rigid codes of behavior pining away for some forgotten and likely fictional past of perfect peace, harmony, and balance, with balance defined as only the light side gets any sway.

On that level, not only can she, but she also will, happily, chatter on long past the point where anyone but Kylo wants to keep listening. (And, in all honestly, he's really only listening at that point because it's Rey talking, and would have tuned out hours ago had it been anyone else. He had twelve years of formal Jedi theology lessons, and three years of independent study; that was more than enough according to him.)

She's got ideas, and yes, some of them are nebulous and some of them she seems to be yanking out of the air based solely on this feels right with a big helping of and I spent a while studying that, and I know that's wrong.

So, on the most basic level of what she hopes to teach, she's been making leaps and bounds and feeling her way around and is on nice, firm, stable territory.

But… See… A school is not only a place where one has ideas. It's a place where one conveys those ideas, to people, who like people everywhere and through all time, are rather tetchy and have their own opinions of how things are supposed to work and what the nature of reality is, and all of these thorny and sticky bits and bobs of reality that are, on several, levels biting Rey in the tail end.

First and foremost, it's becoming abundantly clear, on the day Poe leaves to go off in search of more Maji, that Rey has never, actually, attended a school.

Now, on the upside, none of the children suddenly in her care have, either, so they at least aren't comparing her to any previous experiences, but…

She just doesn't really know what to do with them.

They, on the other hand, are not confused at all about what they want to do. There are eight of them, and between the eight of them they want to do at least twenty things, none of which involves digging channels for pipes to set their cottages up with running water; baths being something none of them are particularly in favor of.

They do want to learn how to use a lightsaber, or barring that, a lightstaff, or for that matter, pretty much any sort of weapon she might be willing to allow them to bonk each other with. Bonking each other with weapons seems to be nine/tenths of what they expect to learn, and they're not wildly enthusiastic to hear that's not going to be nine/tenths of the lessons.

Granted, bonking with weapons appears to also be nine/tenths of what they think the Force is useful for and what the Jedi did, so… it's not an unreasonable expectation.

Half of them want to get on the Faviers and just ride around. "Scout the terrain," as Magiit said. (Once they get some homing trackers, Rey's fine with that, but for right now, she wants them staying within sight of the dome.)

Opal and Torine are watching the sky, hoping Poe will come back soon, because they're starting to think this was a bad plan. (Lack of weapons to bonk with, too much fish, this strange woman who wants them to dig trenches and think about balance are all taking a toll.) Rey certainly is feeling some sympathy for that.

Rugh wants to help do whatever Rey is doing, which is great, but she's four, so "helping" often translates into making whatever it is three times more difficult, and in one case, cleaning the mess up means she got less done than if she'd spent the day on the Supremacy, laying around in bed, waiting for Kylo to get done with whatever the hell it is he's doing today, which the more she thinks about it the better it's sounding and…

Yeah…

But… This is the job. Develop ideas, convey ideas, make sure little people get those ideas and then are prepared to leave this planet and go off and do things with those ideas.

So… "Okay, come on. I know you find a lot of this boring, but… We've got to have clean water. If your waste ends up in the lake, we all get sick, and none of us want that. We need to get the insides of your cottages set up. We need to stake out a place for the Faviers so they don't just wander off. All of this has to get done, how do we do it?"

"This doesn't sound like learning about the Force," Blane says.

"We'll do that while we work. Hands and bodies busy, minds calm. I don't know about you guys, but if I sit still too long, I get antsy."

They all look around, and it occurs to her that it's unlikely they've ever had enough time, awake, to just sit still to get antsy.

Well, before a deserter came and found her and the droid that befriended her, she never had either, so… She looks around, they've got channels to dig and pipes to lay, and that's likely the most important of the jobs. They're going to be in a world of hurt, though she's suspicious that if she can't use the Force to fix it, that she could likely get medicine from Kylo to help, but… If they get their waste or the Favier's waste (the real reason they can't just go roaming around) into the water supply, they are going to get sick.

(She sighs. They're going to need something to clean the water soon, which means more plumbing, which is, as of this point in time, her least favorite chore, ever.)

"So… Digging. We want the pipes deep enough that they can't get dug up by something else and they won't be tripping us up, but shallow enough that if they leak, we'll see the wet spot, so let's call that fifteen centimeters.

"We've got four cottages for you guys, and mine, and the three that I've got set up for when Chewie and Finn and Rose come visit." Which is two of the cottages. She hopes, though she assumes said visit would be difficult on some levels, that Leia will come, too. But, last she heard, she was still scouring the galaxy for First Order targets they could attack without getting themselves killed. Last she heard was Finn and Rose's visit, and she doesn't mind being outside the chain of what's happening next. That way she doesn't have to juggle any sense of responsibility to Kylo, or to his mother. "We've got the main line of pipe through here." She gestures to the line that leads between their cottages. "So where do you think we should put this line, and should we just add onto the main line, or start a new one?"

She's not just asking to ask. She's curious to see if any of them have learned any of this sort of stuff, or have any kind of mechanical aptitude.

What she learns is that half of them couldn't care less, and the other half have three very different, very strong, opinions on the matter.

Magiit's, the best of the lot, is the most work, and the one they likely won't take. Namely, she's under the impression that they're on the wrong bank of the lake, and if they went to the other side, sixteen kilometers away, they'd be at a lower grade than the lake, and they'd have to use less energy to get the water to their cottages, and any waste matter that isn't properly contained would drain away from the lake. This is both correct and probably useful, but Rey wanted her chapel on the high ground, and her town close to the chapel, so…

"If we ever get enough people here to make it worthwhile, we'll certainly take that into account. In the meantime," she looks to Blane, who's been arguing about how they need to dig a separate line, mostly because if they ever spring a leak, it won't end up taking out the water for the whole town. "That's a good idea, too." Blane smiles at that.

Opal, who along with her twin Torine, ended up working on Canto Bight because they were sold to cover their parents' debts, looks at the bit of trench that's already dug. "You sure you want it this close to the surface?"

Torine nods at that. "It got cold once, really cold, back home on Huiit, and the pipes that weren't deep enough burst."

"It shouldn't get that sort of cold here," Rey says. "This is the equator, so all the seasons should be about the same, maybe a little wetter or drier, or a little cooler or hotter, but it shouldn't ever get that cold."

They take Blane's suggestion, and lay another line. So that means digging a new trench all the way to the lake. In the big scale of things, it's not that difficult. Any of them can walk the distance in less than two minutes. But digging and walking are not the same thing.

"Come on, let's get some shovels, and get going."

"Let's see how it goes." Rey throws the switch and the pump chugs to life and for a good thirty seconds nothing happens, or everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to, and then they start seeing little fountains of water shooting through the air at various joints that aren't quitetogether.

"We failed!" Torine says.

"Eh…" Rey says, though she's disappointed, too. "We're learning." She turns the pump off and the water begins to drain out. "Every day we're learning new things, and right now, we're learning about focus."

"We failed because we didn't focus?" Marrok asks.

"Nah, we failed because this is a job that takes time and practice to get right, and it even takes me a few shots to get the solder in right. First time I turned on the water in my shower, it was pouring out of the joints into my wall.

"So, no we didn't fail because of lack of focus. I want us to think of focus like it's the pipes. Our minds, our energy, our ability to do things, that's the water. And most of the time, it wants to go all over the place." She shrugs a little at that. "At least for me, that's true. I can have so many ideas all bouncing around in there at once, getting down to just one or two of them can be tricky sometimes."

They follow her to the first of the leaking joints, and she pulls the pipe up, and begins unthreading it. She hands it to Opal. "We need to make sure it's dry and really clean. If it's got dirt or water on it, it won't seal right, and we'll just have to do this again."

Opal starts wiping it. Rey wiggles her fingers at Opal, letting her know to hand it over, and shows her how to do it. Scrubbing grit off a pipe thread, that's something she knows how to do.

"Anyway, the pipe is our focus, it's the way we channel our ideas, and get them going where they belong. Part of what I'm hoping we're going to learn here is good focus. It's easier to do anything when you can get all of yourself doing it."

And, okay, she's not feeling like a total failure with that. That's a good save out of water spraying all over her trench and having to pull muddy pipes out of the ground and trying to get them together, right, this time, but…

How do you teach someone to focus?

Of course, she knows someone who went to school, specifically to learn exactly this sort of thing. All she has to do is ask.

Asking about each other's pasts tends to feel like walking blindfolded through a field seeded with landmines.

They both caught bits of it the first time their minds touched. He, apparently, caught a view of her parents and when they left her. She got his fear of not being Vader. An image, stark and cold, of a younger Kylo, in tattered, singed robes, standing, then kneeling, before Snoke, and feeling his triumph shattering as suddenly the entire map under his feet shifted.

He'd expected to be welcomed as a champion, as the scion of Vader reborn, and what came next was even more of a shock than waking with Luke about to strike him… or not… down. (She wonders if it's possible for both versions of the story to be true at the same time, and feels that it likely is. She also wonders, more deeply, that if Snoke could get that far into Kylo's mind, if he wasn't also pushing Luke out of his normal path. Not that she's known Luke well, but… The idea that he, too, was being manipulated seems more likely than he just woke up one night in a murderous rage.)

She's caught other pieces of his past, both when he's spoken of it, and sometimes when he dreams. Sometimes the words stop, but she can still feel, or ghost along in the back of, his images.

She knows he's gotten views of sand and scrounging, of red pain and black fear, the taste of scorched air without a hint of moisture, the eternal gnaw of low grade hunger, and the smell of cleaning solvents off of her.

"You're thinking loudly," he says to her as she's not looking at him, but not exactly seeing the plate of noodles and vegetables they're sharing.

She's noticed that's a shorthand they're developing, too, a way to make it clear that the option of talking about those thoughts is available, but not prying them out of each other's heads without regard to the idea that sometimes some thoughts should stay private.

Finn and Rose never have this problem. Their brains stay nicely in their own heads, and sometimes she envies that. But, having acknowledged that he's aware of where her thoughts are, she knows it's okay to bring them to her lips.

"I've never been to school. I don't know what to do with them, Kylo."

"What did you do today?"

"Dug a trench, put a pipe together, three times, and finally got it working, and then buried it. Then they showed me how to ride the Faviers. We caught some fish, cleaned it, cooked it, I made sure they ate, and then came here."

"Doesn't sound like a bad day to me. Granted, I did tax reports and recruiting targets today."

He pushes his chair back a little, and undoes his tunic, not taking it off, just… getting comfortable, she guesses. There's a wash of putting something together, the image of Ben, of loose robes without a lot of structure, light, warm colors that wrapped around him… All banished by stiff, structured, tight, black.

He inclines his eyebrows a bit, letting her know that's not something he ever consciously thought about, but it's likely right.

He pulls the image to the front of his mind, and shares it with her. A small boy with dark, unruly hair, most of it just long enough to brush the nape of his neck, but he had a little braid hanging down on his right side. He wore tan trousers, an ecru shirt that wrapped around him and tied at his waist, and a darker brown jacket, with the same wrap around styling. In the image, his hands and feet are bare, and he's reaching out… calling something to him.

"A book. The first thing I successfully, intentionally called to my hand was a book."

"A good one?"

"Back then, any book I hadn't already read fifty times was a good one. There weren't a lot of things I liked doing that didn't make the adults nervous, but reading was one of them." He thinks back, and Rey can feel the weight of the book in his hands. It's a slim volume, just as thick as one of her hands, bound in smooth leather. "Poems about the Force. Somewhere between prayers and songs. Luke liked them."

Kylo shakes his head. She gets a view of Luke watching, encouraging him, and the few other children with him, telling them to clear their minds and really feel whatever it was they were trying to move. "He's only a few years older than I am now in that memory."

"What did you do? In school… What was an average day like?"

He doesn't smile at the memory, but she can feel he's… not at peace with it, but it doesn't hurt anymore. "The school was self-sufficient. The only things Luke bought were things we just couldn't make for ourselves, mostly structural metals, wires, plasteel, transteel, things like that. He split the days into even and odd with different schedules for each. Every day started with chores. You'd either be on food prep or taking care of the animals, and we all did all of it, so it was just a matter what day it was. I had food prep on even days. Half of the time you'd be steeping tea, and making porridge, toasting bread or frying eggs, and the other half you'd be feeding and milking the sheep, feeding the hflers, and collecting eggs from the ugandos. Once morning chores were over, we'd have breakfast. Communal meal, everyone eats together, everyone cleans up together.

"After that, even days are lesson days: Reading, writing, math, geography, history, an hour of each. That was the morning session. Lunch break, again, communal, this time though everyone cooks, eats, and cleans up. Recess. We'd have an hour to do whatever we liked. Afternoon session: The Church of the Force. Holy doctrine, philosophy, theology, history of the church, history of great Jedi. That's another four hours. Supper break. Like breakfast, half of us are taking care of the animals, half of us are cooking, then all together for the meal and clean up.

"After supper, an hour of quiet study, whatever interested us, but quiet. That left two hours of the night to ourselves to do whatever we liked. Then to our cottages and lights out."

"What did you do the other day?"

"Meals and taking care of the animals stayed the same, we just switched what we were doing. Morning session was physical Force work. Go at it rested and calm and well-fed. That would be everything from levitating things to lightsaber practice to one-handed handstands to… all of it. We'd all be exhausted, hungry, and sweaty by the end of that. Again, lunch. Instead of a free hour, we'd spend that time on keeping up the property. Fixing things, tending the gardens, stuff like that. Later afternoon, making things. And that covered everything from learning how to shear the sheep and hflers, clean their wool, spin it, and then weave it and sew our clothing, to building lightsabers."

"You sew?" She has a hard time imagining that.

"I even knit." He flashes her an image of a much younger version of himself with a ball of tan yarn, and four knitting needles in a square, fingers moving fast and easy, working on what she assumes is a sock, while he reads something. "I can make butter and cheese. I built my lightsaber. I've put up cherry preserves, and installed windows, and helped to patch leaking domes, and built comm systems, and weeded gardens, and… I wasn't very good with the animals. They didn't like me all that much, and the plants weren't a whole lot better, but anything that took quick hands, an eye for detail, and precision, I was great at." He shrugs a little. "Luke grew up on a self-sufficient farm. That's what he knew how to do, so that's how he build his school." Then he sighs a little, thinking of what happened on the odd days after supper.

Rey feels the tension in that sigh. She sends him the sense of tell me more. Rey more than knows that Kylo has enough sarcasm for a good six people stuffed into his skin. And when he lets it go… He could cut plasteel with the scorn in his voice as he says, "Then dinner again, and after that meditation time. Sit quietly, focus down, and find your nice, calm, peaceful, light side center." His voice is sharp, and she can feel he's quoting Luke. "'Feel the Force, let it lead you to a deeper communion with the light inside you. Let it help you to release your dark feelings. They're a prison, looking to capture your spirit and trap your will, so just sit comfortably, relax, open your minds and'…" Sarcasm, scorn, anger, aimed at Luke, she feels that, and it's probably a good ninety percent of the dark in him right now, but there's another ten percent simmering under there, aimed at the boy who was Ben, who just couldn't master those skills, who couldn't let it go. "And next thing I know 'Vader's' in my head telling me about how useless all of this is and how I was meant for the dark and denying my true self is a betrayal of everything that matters and…" His tone goes normal again. "Then two more hours on our own, and bedtime again."

"Luke just… let him play in your mind?"

That gets a sigh, too. An annoyed one. He pokes the noodles with a fork, but doesn't lift a bite to his lips. "Not exactly. He tried walling my mind off. Unfortunately, he only seemed to have two levels, completely cut off from the Force, or not nearly enough to keep Snoke out. The only thing more troubling than a voice talking in your head is a voice you can just barely hear. Little non-distinct whispers in the back of my mind for weeks until he gave that up. He tried teaching me how to do it. But, I didn't want to shut out the only voice telling me I was just fine the way I was."

Rey can understand that. She knows what she would have given to have had a voice pet and praise her. Someone to tell her she mattered.

Another though springs into her mind, unbidden, Han saying that one of the students killed all of the other ones.

This time Kylo doesn't wait to respond. He looks up from the supper he's not eating, making sure he's got eye contact as he says, "Not all of them. Not even most of them, though I assume that's likely the story their parents were told. Likely the story their parents wanted to hear."

"What happened?"

"I may have been the only dark student there, but I wasn't the only one with some dark tendencies. All four of us who weren't pristinely light had a difficult time there. And when he attacked me, I blasted him back, shattered my cottage with the force of it, buried him in the rubble. I wasn't exactly calm or unmoved by the experience, so I was screaming at him about attacking me in my sleep, attacking the stones above him with my saber. And that attracted the attention of the other students. They ran to us.

"I knew he wasn't dead, but M'Gll didn't.

"She was my age, the only other Master, and she was not, on any level, dark. She was… what they'd hoped I'd be. Poised and calm and steady. Passionless and easily centered. Good. Always so easily good. And what she loved more than anything was the idea of righteous justice. She adored the stories of the great Jedi Knights, the warriors of the Old Republic, who hunted down and destroyed the Sith.

"She found me standing in the rubble, blade extended, screaming about killing him, and between that and the fact she'd always been aware of my dark, her blade was out, and she'd rallied most of the school to her side to take down the baby Sith in their midst.

"Three of the other students joined me, and we won. Eight on four, and the youngest one was fourteen. Luke had long given up on finding small children at that point, thinking the training worked better with older students. I only fought M'Gll. By the time we were done, the rest of the students were, too. I burned the school, burned the library, burned the barns, burned everything. I marked their faces with ash. The Jedi didn't want us, but I did. So they were mine. The Knights of Ren. Kammun could fly, so he got us out of there, and I knew where we needed to go."

"You knew Luke was still alive?"

He nods. "Yes. Unconscious, wounded, and buried, but alive. I wanted him to feel just as betrayed when he woke up as I did."

"The ones who joined you… What happened to them?"

There's a tiny quirk to his lip that could be a smile if it weren't so sad. "The Knights of Ren. We trained with Snoke for several years, and for several years our main job was the destruction of any Force sensitive person he could find. He didn't have a hard time convincing us that any new Jedi was a mortal threat to our continued existence. Though through the years we found two more who also became Knights."

"And now?" She knows he is, or was, the Master of the Knights of Ren, but she's never seen a Knight of Ren, and he doesn't exactly talk about them.

"Four years ago, I had my final test proving that I'd overcome any last thread of light. I knelt there and let him kill them in front of me. That's why he was so sure he couldn't be betrayed. If I didn't break for comrades I'd known and fought with for decades at that point, what was the value of a stranger?"

Rey doesn't know what to do with that. Part of her is revolted at the idea of him kneeling there, letting it happen. Part of her, like Poe, feels like this is the saddest thing she's ever heard. Part of her wants to go find Snoke and kill him all over again, just to do it.

Kylo nods. "Add in grief on top of that, and good helping of self-loathing, and that's about right. He told me to remember that feeling, all of the grasping black tendrils of it, and that through it, I'd be stronger than anyone who ever came up against me." His voice is sounding detached as he says, "And from that day on, I didn't lose a single fight, except for training matches against Phasma, until I went up against you.

"The last thing he said to me, before I went to find you the first time, was 'Even you, Master of the Knights of Ren, have never been so tested…' He'd rub it in, remind me of it, call me Master, when he wanted that extra jolt of hate. Make me that much more dangerous, steep myself in that much more loathing."

She gives his hand a gentle squeeze.

He's not looking at her as he says, "The job of the Master is to lead and protect his charges. I led them, but didn't protect them." Then he does look at her, shuddering all over, before saying. "School." He rubs his lips together. "Uh… make sure they have time to run around. That's the thing I found most useful. If you've got time to physically do stuff, whatever you're doing with your brain'll stick better."

"Okay."

"Um…" He blinks, thinking. "You don't actually know how to read… I mean, not in a way you can teach someone else, right?"

She thinks about it, and comes to the conclusion he's likely right about that.

"And you've only got the one copy of your library…"

She nods at that, too.

"How many, total, do you think you can handle? What's the largest number of students you'll take?"

"As many as Poe brings me?" That there might be a limit on this wasn't something she'd considered.

He shakes his head at that. "Set a top number. Eventually you'll hit a point where it's just too many of them, unless you get more adults."

"Okay… Uh… Thirty."

"Tomorrow." He eats a bite of the noodles. And she realizes she's also been ignoring the meal, so likewise lifts a bite to her lips. "I'll get you thirty primers and thirty blank pads. You'll have copies of your library so everyone can read at once, and something they can learn to read from."

"You can…"

"We've got tens of thousands of children on this ship alone, and the First Order makes sure they can all read and write and do basic math. Can't be good soldiers if they can't do that. Getting equipment for your sprogs will barely put a dent in a rounding error in our equipment levels."

She thinks about that, and then says, "Kylo, are they First Order primers?"

He inclines his head a bit, not sure what she means by that. Obviously, they're First Order primers.

"Are they filled with short, easy stories about how amazing Snoke is, and how the Resistance is evil, and…"

He winces, remembering how all of those stories of the Jedi heroes shaped his past. "I'll check. If they are… I'm sure C8 can find thirty, basic, non-First Order primers." He sighs at that, too, and then shakes his head. "Kill the past step seven thousand fifty-six, if they're First Order indoctrination documents, I've got to get rid of them anyway."

She takes another bite of the noodles. "There's your 'random spot check' for tomorrow night."

After that conversation, neither of them are feeling especially playful or sexy. So dinner wraps up, and slides into bath time, which helps some, and from there both of them are looking for a bit more time between those memories and anything approaching erotic touch, but it's getting later.

Rey's checked the chronometer six times in the last twenty minutes.

"You're worried."

"They're all alone there. And unlike you, I don't have a comm if something goes wrong."

"Do you want to go back to your cottage?" he looks disappointed at that.

"I want us to go back to my cottage. You installed the locks yourself; you know they work. How about you try sleeping there again?"

"Just sleep?"

"Not necessarily. Our usual evening, just, at my place."

He thinks about that for a moment and then says, "What if they hear?"

She looks amused at that. Yes, they make noise, but besides their first time, she doesn't recall him, or her, ever shouting. "How loud are you planning on being? They've got their own cottages, not sleeping on the floor in mine. I just want to be closer if they need an adult."

"What if the Force sensitive one—" he pauses for that child's name.

"Marrok."

"Senses me?"

She can feel he's looking for excuses to stay here. "Have you met him before?"

He flashes her an irked look.

"Then if he sense you, all he'll know is that I've got a friend who comes to visit at night."

"A dark friend?" his voice is sharp.

"Is the stress on dark or friend?" She can feel he's dealing with both of those words.

"Both?"

She rests her palms against his chest. "My dark friend… lover… mirror… mate… man… balance… The dark gray to my light?" She kisses him. "What would you have me call you?"

Husband arcs through him, and she feels it, but he doesn't give it voice. "Friend is fine."

She holds out her hand to him. "Come home with me, friend."

For weeks, the Supremacy has known that changes are coming. Whispers of new badges and new stencils and preparations for a huge rally have been galloping through the halls and canteens.

Where the rumors haven't been stirring, much, was among the children and sub-adults. They go about their days as usual, training, learning to be effective members of the First Order.

And then, one day, the lessons in their pads suddenly changed. The basic content was the same. The Aurebesh, basic math, fundamentals of grammar, colors, shapes, and species all of that was the same, but the stories of the glory of the First Order all vanished overnight. The series of Adventures of Hux, featuring a young Armitage Hux, illustrated with soft edges, fluffy red hair, and big blue eyes, overcoming all challenges for the glory of the First Order ceased to exist. The Captain Phasma Comics, illustrated stories aimed at the girls of the First Order, making sure they all knew that just because they were girls didn't mean they couldn't be just as strong and useful as the boys, evaporated overnight. The tales of First Order soldiers bravely fighting against the Evil Republic were suddenly replaced with tales of fluffy animals and cute robots. Evil Jedi plotting behind closed doors to corrupt the Force and ensorcel the unwary fled to the ethers.

Their teachers were just as shocked as the children to find their lesson plans suddenly irrelevant as the texts they were teaching from disappeared.

But all of them were more than bright enough to know that while computers can glitch, this isn't the sort of thing that happens as the result of a glitch.

And three days after the change, when they got the official command, from Supreme Leader Ren, explaining how they were getting out of the propaganda business and into the teaching business, those murmurs turned into a full out chorus of curious voices.

They could understand getting rid of the Adventures of Hux and Captain Phasma Comics, both Hux and Phasma were gone, but… The rest of it? Why get rid of the history of the First Order? Why stop teaching what made the First Order the First Order?

Something's coming all right, and everyone is talking about it.

Notes:

A: I do not for one minute believe Luke 'I-Can-Sense-The-Good-In-You' Skywalker was sitting in his hut one night, contemplating the nature of the Force or whatnot, and decided that the kid he'd been raising for the last however long suddenly posed an existential level threat to everything he ever worked for so he got up, grabbed his lightsaber, sauntered on over to Ben's cottage to go take his head off.

No.

THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.

That said, Snoke, "Check me out, I've got more Force power in my toenail than the next six Jedi combined" poking around in Luke's mind, flooding him with dark images, makes a lot of sense to me.

And given what Luke did next, SHUT HIMSELF OFF FROM THE FORCE COMPLETELY, I'm thinking that Luke knew he was being played, so he took himself out of the game so he couldn't be played again.

B: I'm not kidding, Hux had plans. If you want to check out: post/173123942443/ottenebrare-wishing-a-very-happy-belated you'll have an idea of the kinds of images I'm talking about. I don't know why, but the idea of Hux, sitting there, in his rooms, plotting his eventual overthrow of Snoke, down to making sure that the entire upcoming generation of soldiers worshipped him, just tickles me to no end.

C: One of you asked, and if one of you asks, that likely means more are wondering the same thing, so, if you see Kylo and Rey talking in italics with no quotes, that's them thinking to each other. By this part in the story they are capable of full telepathic conversation.

That said, some things are better off just left in their own minds, and they're trying to figure out how to not just blast each other with everything they're thinking and feeling.