Author's Notes: Part of the Den/Fin Files, written 50 lyric fanfic challenge prompt: Welcome to the jungle, we take it day by day. If you want it you're gonna bleed but it's the price you pay. All characters belong to Tolkien.
His mother had always dreaded the day that he would join the Guard, Boromir remembered ruefully. She'd at least pretended to take an interest when he described the intricacies of his swordsmanship lessons, and had humored his love for tales of battle over romance. But still, he had heard he whisper with his father when she thought he was not watching; when he was "absorbed" in childish antics involving a wooden sword, an overstuffed chair, and occasionally, his baby brother. At least he'd never used the sword on Faramir. Intentionally. If the younger boy had not really deserved it. And then his mother or Nanny Camithiel would take the sword away for a week, and worse, Faramir would cry, so it was never fully worth it.
But having Faramir underfoot whilst playing had sharpened Boromir's senses, allowing him to be alert for other sounds even as he concentrated upon the brown, shabbily-upholstered enemy before him.
"I suppose I should be glad that he shows such an interest in such things. He'll need them, I know," Boromir heard his mother say.
He turned slightly at the sound of her voice, catching sight of his father's approving smile. Boromir flashed them both a grin of his own before returning to the delicate art of furniture slaying. "He'll be a match for our legendary Thorongil himself, one day."
"Just like his father." Boromir's curiosity for the remainder of their conversation dimmed; he recognized that tone. It was bad enough to have his mother fussing over him without overhearing her do the same to his father. "But he'll need more than a warrior's skill. Even now, we have some hope of peace, and all the political niceties that go along with it," Finduilas had stated with shaky optimism.
"Give him time; he'll learn the easy part soon enough. If we are lucky, he might yet be the last of our house that needs such a love of fighting." Boromir's memory of the rest of that particular day was rather hazy, but he thought he recalled rescuing Faramir from the monstrous chair-dragon without mishap for once.
In the end, none of his later training had been so easy as his father's soothing words might have suggested. Politics might be Denethor's battlefield of choice, but Boromir still felt more at peace with a sword in his hands. Even now, when he had been serving in the military for but for three months officially, and already he had broken his arm, ripped a tendon, and had gotten enough minor wounds to scar his mother for life, had she lived to see them, it was better than the council chambers. There, one would not get hurt physically, but Boromir saw no victory within them. Here, yes, he bled. He could be killed. But he could win. And all the blood he lost was worth it, if future generations had no greater enemies than their father's old, overstuffed chair.