Disclaimer: We don't own Naruto, and we don't own A Song of Ice and Fire. We make no profits writing fanfics about them.

Contributing Authors: The King in White, Glacious, Last Falconry

(AN - White): This chapter was hotly debated, but in the end I feel I was satisfied. I'm sure at some point we really should have stopped. Instead, let's keep going and see what happens.

(AN- Glacious): We disagreed quite vehemently on what course this story ought to take. I nearly chickened out of writing the part that I did (everything after Catelyn's POV), but then King reminded me that our collab agreement included smut, crack and black humour. So, I sat and wrote it out. Laughing at times, but feeling miserable about myself for laughing. You are turning me into a monster, King.


The copper scent of blood filled the air of the feast hall, accompanying the screams of the wounded and dying Northmen. For Catelyn Stark, it was the kind of scene she had only beheld in her deepest nightmares. "Seven preserve us…"

Stumbling drunkenly through the hail of crossbow bolts and around Frey men locked in mortal combat with her son's army, Catelyn plucked a dagger from the cobble floor and clenched it in sweat slicked fingers. She needed to do something – anything – to halt the slaughter before she lost her only remaining son.

Her grasp tightened, fingers clenching down hard on the hilt of the dagger, as she frantically looked about among the chaos, searching for that catalyst that would let her bring her desired outcome about.

She stopped, her eyes wide. There, in the corner was one of the Freys, staring dumbly at the struggle to the death that happened around him.

The rotund fool was her key. Witless he might have been, he was still one of Walder Frey's children. There had to be some love there, some desire to not see his son leave to the void, something that she could use to ransom the safety of her only living son.

Cat's grip tightened further, becoming more akin to the grasped roots of a gnarled oak than the soft hands of a noblewoman. She had a goal now, a purpose that steeled her against the panic and mortal fear gnawing at her heart.

Swiftly she strode through the crowd, going unnoticed among the men clashing for their lives, until she reached the weasel-faced son; who hadn't noticed her either. He was still staring at the battle with an expression of imbecilic curiosity.

Reaching out, Cat roughly grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled his back against her. Before he could protest, the point of the knife was pressed against his neck, hard enough that a drop of blood escaped past the skin. The boy whimpered, but the sound was lost among the din of the battle and even if Catelyn heard, it was beyond her ability to care about something so trivial as her hostage's discomfort.

"Stop!" Her voice was shrill and raw from panic, almost inhuman. Even through the clashing of blades, it caught the ears of everyone in the hall, and slowly, as though unsure, the fighters disengaged, backing away from each other, clearly defensive. A note of confusion sprung up. Was a mother's fear enough to motivate them to drop their blades?

Her blazing blue eyes fell on Frey, the elderly man's hand raised and that feeble hope was burned to ashes. He might have called them off, a brief halt to the assault to take stock of the new variable in the situation; but the wrinkled old ferret still wore his greed like a cloak.

A shard of dread, sharp and cold, buried its way into her gut. The Late Lord Frey didn't look fearful. He appeared mildly curious and more than a little amused, as though she were a jester doing a trick that was somewhat clever and had managed to catch his attention.

But there was no way that was true. It was a mask, he was trying to cover up anything that she could use. He had to be. Her hostage might be an obese useless tit with the mind of an idiot child, but he was still the man's son.

It took every ounce of effort Cat could muster to keep the quiver out of her voice when she spoke. "Allow my son to leave, Frey and I will spare your own. A son for a son."

An expectant breath was held at her impertinent demand – because what else could it be but a rash claim? The Northern Host was locked out of The Twins, and the lords loyal to her son were dying all around her. Catelyn was utterly in Walder Frey's power, and they both knew it.

Cold triumph glittered in the aged Lord's watery eyes, and he shook his scrawny head. Walder Frey might have been one of the oldest men in Westeros, universally reviled for his cowardly pettiness and weasally countenance. But in this moment, despite being crippled by gout, he loomed taller than any other man.

Cat didn't even have to hear him to know that her last desperate demand would be denied. The liver-spotted hand of the traitorous lord twitched down, and all hope was gone.

Then, a deep purple light seethed into existence with a crackle, swelling over all their heads like a looming toxic cloud.


The world had gone dark for a few moments. Now, it sprang back into existence. Harsh light. Solid ground. Stone beneath their sandals. Naruto was hit by a wave of nausea. Sasuke had doubled over next to him, gasping, showering abuses - something about overpowered techniques and going and fucking a camel's caramel cunt.

Strange chattering. Panicked cries. Tunnel vision.

He threw up.

Then he looked up, vomit still trickling down his chin and onto his tracksuit. The world blurred in, out, out and then in again. He saw terrified eyes and a quivering frame. A mere child (or was it a half man? The height fluctuated from second to second, five feet tall then two taller, then three shorter, and Naruto vowed never to travel using Amenotejikara again), held hostage by a woman whose face was twisted into an expression of what he assumed to be malevolent glee. He could barely think straight. But he had seen a similar expression twice before, on Madara's face and on Sasuke's, and he knew that nothing good could come of it.

A bead of blood appeared at the base of the man's throat. He whimpered. The woman pressed down harder.

Naruto moved. But his movements were clumsy due to disorientation. He still covered the ten feet between them in the blink of an eye, but where he had aimed to end up right before her so that he could pluck the dagger out of her hand, he ended up behind her; a good two feet behind. And then he threw up again, lost his footing, and tumbled to the ground, into a pool of blood.

A dead man stared right back at him. The lady's first victim, he assumed. A grim reminder of what was to become of the man child if he did not stop her.

He somehow got back to his feet, still swaying, eyes still on the woman and the child, the world around still dark. He saw her hand move; saw it being drawn across the man child's throat in slow motion, and he did the only thing that he could think of. A desperate ploy. One final attempt to stop her.

He drilled a rasengan into her back.

He had aimed to incapacitate. The power he had pushed into it was a mere fraction of how much he could have. It would only have scratched at most an S rank Shinobi, temporarily putting them out of commission. Enough time for the bastard to get his act together and put them all under Genjutsu until they could straighten everything out.

That is not what happened.

Catelyn Stark shot across the room at unimaginable speeds, like a cannonball let loose, man child still in tow. She smashed through four rows of tables, tore through a few banners that hung low - none of it slowing her down - and crashed into a wall a good twenty feet away.

The wall exploded. She exploded. A pike stuck to it sheared her head off. There was a crunching of bone; the wall cracking louder than a gun shot. Stone, brick and mortar torn were loose. A fountain of blood sprayed across the room like a sprinkler system gone haywire. Body parts flew, smashing into men, biting into steel, digging deep into the tables and leaving bloody gouges.

Walder Frey had the misfortune of being seated not more than three feet from where Cat had been turned into a blood splatter. The head, or what remained of it, flopped onto his lap. The head was harmless, but his shocked fall as he twisted away in an attempt to evade it was not.

It was so sudden that he dislocated his hip, had his heart stop due to the pain (and perhaps age), and he died, slowly, painfully. Wheezing. Purpling. Clawing first at his heart and then at the shards of stone and the wood splinters that had burrowed themselves into his eyes during the explosion.

The North Remembered. In her death, Catelyn had her revenge. Insta-revenge, too. Like a 'pour hot water and prepare in two minutes cup of noodles' instant kind of revenge.

As for her, she and the Frey man child had been glued into one, joined, in their moment of death. They had achieved the one-ness that Sakura had so lovingly talked about, and now it was impossible to say where she ended and where he began. There's wasn't much left of either. Perhaps enough to pack into a shoebox. Not a lot beyond.

The hall fell silent, weapons lowered, violence temporarily forgotten; contemplating, quite philosophically, the curious nature of the three deaths they had just witnessed. Naruto stood there for a second, swaying, hand still outstretched.

"Oops," he settled for saying, eventually. And then he fell to his feet and was violently sick a third time.

The strange chattering, something that Naruto was coming to realize was a language, resumed all around and the men burst back into life. Into a violent dance of chaos and confusion, undecided on whether to slaughter each other or the new entrants.

The hall had blurred back into view. Naruto could see the entire room now with the corpses strewn around. The dying men and drawn weapons surrounding him. The wreckage that they had stumbled into finally evident. And Naruto realized, with a sinking heart, that the situation afoot might have been just a bit more delicate than simple hostage rescue.

Then Sasuke got to his feet, getting over his disorientation. He took one look at the carnage around, another at the men sprinting- snarling, weapons drawn, towards Naruto. At the crossbow bolts flying towards his Hokage to be.

His friend.

The man that had saved him.

The man he had vowed to serve and protect, no matter what.

And Uchiha Sasuke decided that the situation could not be allowed to stand. That everyone deserved to die, violently.

Naruto, on the other hand, fresh from realization of the enormity of his error and halfway through an existential crisis absently swatted away the crossbow bolts. He ducked under the onrushing army and gracefully extracted himself from the free for all that ensued; this fish market of sweaty men with bloody blades, noisily swearing vengeance (or so he assumed), spitting and screaming at him as they swung, swung and swung again; pointy things raining down upon him from the heavens; his mind starting to have a meltdown.

He caught Sasuke's eyes, saw the determined glint within, realized what the Uchiha was about to do, and shouted: "No, Sasuke! Don't! They're too easy to accidentally break!"

But it was too late. A sensation washed over him. A mere annoyance to the shinobi, but the men around stopped dead in their tracks; weapons slipping from nerveless fingers. And down they went, like sand castles painstakingly built losing shape, like wooden toys callously flung off clifftops shattering against jagged rocks underneath, like specks of dust casually vacuum cleaned out of existence.

Tongues tied, tripping over each other, shuddering, twitching, blood gushing out their mouths and down their noses. They continued to twitch for half a second more; foaming at the mouth, bleeding from the nose, the putrid stench of excrement rising from their behinds, and then they were still. Sasuke's killing intent was ten times as potent as Orochimaru's. The sensation had only lasted a second before he realized his mistake and backtracked, but the damage was already done.

They were dead. Every last one of them. The frantic voices within had been silenced. The sounds of battle outside had died down. In under a minute, Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke had unintentionally routed two armies that had come together to wine, dine, and finally let the seed of treason wipe out the North's resistance. They had killed treason. They had killed justice.

"What the fuck just happened?" Sasuke asked uncertainly, prodding a corpse (Roose Bolton's) with his foot. The man's trousers were starting to brown, mouth still half open in a half scream taken to the afterlife; a final wretched plea for mercy.

"We…we killed so many people," Naruto whispered, sinking to the floor. His eyes were starting to moisten. The look of profound innocence seemed out of place given the blood and vomit that he was covered in.

A groan caught Sasuke's attention. There, just five feet from him, a man lay breathing his last. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to get out something, anything. But it was no use. Sasuke could see that he was beyond saving. That he barely had moments left to live.

So he did what any half decent human being in a strange world ought to do.

He walked up to him and said "Ningendou," before reaching for him and grabbing his soul. The memories were made his own, and four things were made clear to him as the man shuddered one last time and then went still.

One, this was a world different from their own. The language. The cities. The culture. Everything.

Two, he could now speak the language. Being an overpowered shinobi had its benefits from time to time.

Three, they had stumbled upon a bloody struggle for something called the Iron Throne, and they had just wiped out the only sane claimants to it.

And four, he had, without meaning to, sucked out Robb Stark's soul with an echoing slurp.

How very inconvenient.

Naruto was wailing now. Tears leaking down his eyes and snot down his nose as he rocked back and forth, hyperventilating while looking at the lady he had decapitated. Sasuke briefly considered sparing him more pain and torment, then shrugged and told him everything there was to tell anyway.

The wails rose in pitch and fervor. Naruto crawled through the sea of corpses, miraculously identifying the only two that he was responsible for.

"I'm so sorry, lady," he said, "so, so sorry." It seemed insufficient. There was nothing more to say. The head, which still lay in Walder Frey's arms, stared at him in judgment. He had stopped crying for a few moments to get his apology out. Now, with his apology rebuffed by the dead, he began to weep again.

Sasuke felt his heart go out to his friend. This clusterfuck was not Naruto's fault (except it totally was), and he had only killed two out of the several hundreds, perhaps thousands of people that had died that day. But to see him so defeated, so miserable, so far from his cheery self was gut wrenching. Heartbreaking. He had to try and console his friend. Try and cheer him up again. Try and show him that he understood his pain and that he would help him in fixing this mess.

He walked up to Naruto and knelt beside him.

"Hn," he said, sympathetically, almost sorrowfully.

"Thanks, Sasuke, you're a great friend," Naruto said, between sobs, rubbing away at his face with his sleeve.

Then he reached out, grabbed Sasuke's brand new cloak, and blew his nose in it. Sasuke felt his eyebrow twitch, but he said nothing. He was not one to kick a man when he was down.

"Her sons are all dead?" Naruto asked, eyes still red, lip quivering.

"Yes."

"And her daughters are held captive?"

"Yes."

"But she has a half son still alive?"

Sasuke hesitated. "Sort of," he eventually settled for saying.

Naruto's eyes, dull up until then due to the deaths he had caused, shone with hope. "Ya think she'll forgive us if we put him on this Iron Throne?"

Sasuke hesitated again. Catelyn Stark, from what he had seen of her in Robb's memories, hated Jon Snow. She considered him a blight to their family. She had been relieved when he had left Winterfell for the Night's Watch. He nearly said as much, but the hope in Naruto's eyes gave him pause.

Telling Naruto the truth would probably crush him. That there was no penance for what they had done. That Jon Snow had no interest whatsoever in sitting on the Iron Throne and that Catelyn, if she were in some sort of an afterlife, would slit her wrists in despair at the very thought of Jon ending up within a thousand miles of any throne, let alone the greatest of them all.

"She will, I am sure," Sasuke offered instead. "She'll be delighted if Jon Snow sits on the Iron Throne."

And there, amidst a field of corpses of their creation, Naruto's smile shone brighter than the mid-morning sun.

"We'll find him and do that, then," he said, rising. "And we'll save her daughters too." He turned to the head. "I promise you I'll do both, lady. And I never go back on my word. Believe It!"

And for a moment, Naruto was sure that the mostly ruined head looked back at him with some softness and consideration.

Sasuke watched him turn and trudge towards the door, still subdued. But with purpose and a new promise to fulfill.

He wondered again if he ought to tell Naruto the truth, and again he was cast back to the Valley of the End where, twice, Naruto had been willing to give up his life to preserve their bond of brotherhood.

No, he decided, I owe him that much. It probably won't be too much of a problem. Hopefully. Find the Starks held captive, find Snow, put him on the throne, get the fuck out of here.

He had no interest in anything other than the getting the fuck out part, but Naruto was his best friend. And he would do what Naruto said.

He sighed, then stood and followed Naruto to the door.

The things that he did for love.


(AN: Glacious) – Before you ask, no, the last one isn't some kind of a homoerotic yaoi reference. This won't turn into the two of them suddenly developing the hots for each other. It was supposed to show friendship and brotherhood, that's all. I am quite aware, though, of the context in which it is used in both ASOIAF and GOT. Also, the disagreement was with regard to killing Catelyn and the black humour involved. But I will happily admit that it makes a lot more sense than them just showing up and deciding to help her win the Iron Throne for *insert random reason*. Which is why we opted for it in the end. Writing it out was…traumatizing, though. Just went and butchered one of the most touching scenes I've come across in while. I'm so sorry!

(AN – White): 3050 words. Stop crying you pansywaist, it's all downhill from here. Anyway, for those curious about the contributing author tag – while Glacious and I can be considered main coauthors, we might have others pop in from time to time to add a bit. So they'll be credited there.