The soldier turned slightly, and quirked an eyebrow questioningly. "What do you mean?" he asked to the guard.
"My life," the guard said. "You could take it for yourself. Make it your own. It's not much, but it would be a place to start." He looked out at the ruins a while longer, as the other unicorn looked at him. "We're both unicorns, so it's not a problem there. You've even got military training already."
"But what about all the ponies you know?" asked the soldier. "What about your friends? What about your family?" He leaned a little closer. "I can't take those away from you. I can't be you for them, either. They're yours."
"Friends?" The guard looked up at the sky, and quietly exhaled. "I don't have friends. At best I have colleagues, and none who care enough to notice the difference. The only family I have is my mother, and she's not all there anymore, she won't know better either." He eyed the soldier to his side. "It's not much to start with, but it is a starting point. You can build something new from it."
"And what about you?" asked the soldier, confused but curious.
"Free," the guard replied, turning to look at the other. "To go wherever, to do whatever. I'm tired of this life, but maybe you can make something out of what was a dead end for me. I'll travel around. Maybe I'll even make something new of myself. We both get something we want out of this."
The soldier hesitated, looking at the guard's expression. He seemed dead serious, yet completely calm. Either he'd gone insane, or he'd thought about his words long enough to be certain of them. "You'd really do it, for me?"
"For both of us, as I said," the guard replied. "You are a chance I never thought I'd get. If you want to, go ahead. Take my name, take my life, let me be the ghost. A little magic at most is all it'll take for the looks. Just make sure you visit your mother, every once in a while."
The soldier stared in silence at the guard's unwavering eyes. Seconds, then minutes, both quietly thinking without looking away. Finally, the soldier nodded.
The guard leaned in close, and whispered his name in the unicorn's ear. "Ask around, you'll get all the details." The other leaned forward to do the same, but a hoof gently placed on his mouth stopped him. "Don't," the unicorn said. "Let me go without one. Let it die here today."
The unicorn nodded again, and drew back. The other smiled at him, then quietly stood. He looked around, felt the wind blow against his coat, picked a direction away from the heart of the Empire and began to walk.
Not too far away, atop what was left of a building, a pile of rubble taller than some others around, two others followed the conversation, and watched the ghost wander away as the guard was left there. "You're letting them do it?" Celestia asked.
"What harm is there?" asked Twilight back to her.
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I wonder what his new name is now...
(my heart clenched at the whole thing )
I wrote most of this out earlier but forgot to post it, one of the later chapters reminded me.
This chapter made me think about how many characters go nameless in this story, as well as how many different versions of characters there are between multiple pony worlds, humans, clones and dream versions of characters.
Not having a name likely makes most readers have less of an emotional connection to characters. Very distinctive characters like the puzzle stallion can largely overcome this, but even in cases like that it would probably help, since ultimately names are a tag with memory associations and related emotions attached to them. As far as Applejack briefly thinking of this nameless guard as 'expendable' goes, authors generally wouldn't write a character thinking that even in passing about a named character, even one with minimal characterisation, unless they were trying to make a point about the personality or mental state of the character who thought it. The guard performed very well after that and even got a POV chapter, which makes her comment seem worse in retrospect even though an audience won't generally bat an eyelid at dozens of nameless background cannon fodder getting slaughtered, and certainly won't care about it as much as main characters getting killed.
As far as 'male Rarity' goes, would we care about him at all, or at least any more than the guard, if he didn't have a purple mane and white coat? There's minor similarities in personality between him and OG Rarity, but not enough for anyone who wasn't looking to spot them. There's no mention of any Sweetie Belle equivalent either, or any cutie mark description. If it wasn't for him getting a description, which many nameless characters in the story don't get, and male Applejack getting a description and male Rarity reacting to Applejack the way he does, there'd be nothing to makes the audience believe that he's a Rarity. When Equestria Girls first came out, among the people who actually liked it it's fair to say that the Mane 6 and the human group being direct counterparts with very similar personalities is what got them attached to the characters to whatever extent they did, although they became more distinct from each other over time. It's interesting to wonder what type and degree of difference in a universe counterpart character would stop people from automatically getting attached by association. I suspect the people would deal with drastic personality differences, even to the extent of OG and human Rarity vs male Rarity, better than, say, the human characters having almost the exact same personalities as their pony counterparts but with different names and significant variations in appearance. However, I think that if the different looking and acting characters kept the name a lot of the audience would accept them as functionally the same character again. In the story itself, it's easy to wonder if Twilight would let a random enemy soldier trade places with the guard so casually, although I assume she'll secretly be keeping an eye on him.
It's also interesting to wonder how the audience would react to Stella if she went unnamed and was only referred to as Twilight's clone. Maybe the constant name/background association would make people more inclined to hope for her reformation, or try and view her actions more charitably, although she's so unpleasant it'd probably only have a small effect.
Then there's Sunlight and Starburst, who are meant to be taken as different versions of Starlight and Sunburst. At first most people probably assume that Sunlight is the equivalent of Starlight and Starburst the equivalent of Sunburst, but with male Rarity and Applejack and female Shining Armour that become less assumable. Combined with the lack of description and the lack of clear similarities in personalities, there's no way of even being sure that they're meant to be the equivalents of those two specifically, especially since Twilight barely comments on the matter. They could technically be any combination of Starlight, Sunburst, Twilight or Sunset if we're going with theme named unicorn equivalents, although a Twilight equivalent is obviously unlikely for many reasons. Of course it probably is just who it seems, but even in that case the audience can't know which one is which when it comes to being counterparts, and you have to wonder how that affects the reaction.
I guess in the end that chapter about kinky multiversal incestuous ant sex (with bonus inflation) was more important than it first appeared. How many differences can a character have in name, appearance, background, relationships and personality before they stop being counted as a version of someone? It's pretty fascinating to think about.