Enemy Mine / Literature

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• The end of the first book of the Ahriman Trilogy features the hero teaming up with a man whose entire job is hunting down and killing mages like him.
• The Dale Brown novel Air Battle Force culminates in the Taliban detachment that served as primary enemy of that book working with Turkmen and American forces against the Russians, which continues into Plan of Attack.
  • Edge of Battle has Zakharov and Task Force TALON reluctantly cooperating after Comandante Veracruz's double-cross, though it doesn't last.
  • Strike Force is centred on an Iranian coup leader and former enemy of Dreamland who now needs their help. The blurb tells you as much!
• In The War With Liliputs from Alice, Girl from the Future series, Alice teams with Rat and Jolly U, her enemies in most of the books, to get rid of another, more sinister criminal clan.
• The Animorphs only teamed up with their main enemy, Visser Three, twice: to defeat a race of annoying, psycho, tiny-tiny-tiny aliens with a shrink ray and a mass Napoleon Complex, and to escape from a bunch of mutated blue fish-people that want to kill and stuff them for their Derelict Graveyard. On the other hand, Visser One freed them from Visser Three's prison in her very first appearance. Since the Animorphs are guerrilla fighters and Visser One is the main advocate for a stealth invasion (and her host is Marco's mom), they're not unwilling to accommodate her if it hurts Visser Three's credibility — but they're not unwilling to use it as an excuse to double-cross her, either...
  • In Elfangor's Secret, the Ellimist and Crayak both agree that the Time Matrix should not be in the hands of a mere mortal and help the Animorphs stop Visser Four.
  • In the last few books, they team up with Tom and his followers in order to hijack the Pool Ship. Both sides then double-cross each other, but the Animorphs end up winning in the end.
  • In The Andalite Chronicles there's a brief few minutes where Elfangor and the future Visser Three (then only Visser Thirty-Two) team up to escape certain death.
• Artemis Fowl and Holly do this in The Arctic Incident and The Eternity Code — they are opponents, or at the very least rivals with a sore history, even though they have both saved each others' lives. In The Arctic Incident, they cooperate as part of a deal: Artemis uses his above-world influence to investigate a smuggler, while the LEP use their advanced technology to help rescue Fowl Senior. In The Eternity Code, their relationship is more tense as they cooperate to resolve a situation Artemis is partly to blame for. By The Opal Deception, they are friends, and later possibly more than that, though that does not go anywhere.
• In The Transformers book "Battle Beneath the Ice", a few Autobots and Decepticons stumble upon a hidden city in Antarctica, then learn that the city dwellers are robots who plan to program the aggressive instincts of humans, Autobots and Decepticons into themselves and conquer Earth, forcing Bots and Cons to work together to save the day.
• The Bible: In the gospel of Luke, Herod and Pontius Pilate, who were spoken of as being enemies of each other, are said to become friends in the sense that they both found Jesus unworthy of death, which was what the Jewish leaders wanted, and yet they also ridiculed Jesus before the Jews.
• In The Book of Mormon the Nephites and the Lamanites, usually mortal enemies of one another, join forces against the even more murderous Gadianton robbers in 3rd Nephi.
• In Tom Kratman's Caliphate, in spite of a continuing state of low-level conflict between them, the Imperial States of America and the Celestial Kingdom of the Han (China) work together to eliminate a significant bioweapon threat posed by the eponymous Caliphate.
• In Andre Norton's Catseye, faced with Troy's suspicion, Rerne proposes that they join forces against a common foe.
• City of Bones by Martha Wells: When faced with cooperating either with Riathen, their sort-of-ally and mentor who's about to do something truly terrible, or with Constans, who's murderously insane but is trying to prevent it, Khat and Elen reluctantly make their peace with the latter. When Riathen realizes what a disaster he's on the brink of causing, even he cooperates with Constans.
• This is a major part of the plot of all 3 novels in CS Friedman's Coldfire trilogy: an immortal vampire and a priest team up to fight mutual enemies. By the end of the novels, the priest has been thrown out of his church and the vampire's patron Dark God has rescinded his immortality and cast him into Hell for being insufficiently evil. Turns out saving the world isn't compatible with maintaining that black-as-a-moonless-night karma, who knew?
• In the Codex Alera series, the Canim have Gadara, meaning "trusted enemy". Gadara can often work together, as Tavi and Varg eventually do.
  • The trope is carried much further with the appearance of the Vord, which allows the First Lord to forge tentative alliances with all of Alera's long-standing enemies to fight together against the new opponent. In fact, the First Lord ends up saying the Vord was the best thing to happen to Alera.
• In the Crown of Slaves sub-series of the Honorverse, Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki are two intelligence operatives from the warring Star Empire of Manticore and the Republic of Haven (Formerly People's Republic of Haven). They team up to investigate Mesan intrigue and how it impacts the war. It's implied this sub series may lead to a Grand Alliance...
  • Really, by now it's evident that The Climactic Conflict will be between the Andermani/Havenites/Manticore/Maya/Beowulf/Torch/others versus the frikkin' huge Solarian League (minus bits like Maya)/Mesa/whatever else we haven't seen yet. It promises to be awesome.^note Though in context, Manticore and (post-Theisman Coup) Haven are natural allies, particularly considering how vehemently both of them enforce the Cherwell Convention. Now that the reason for the war — the PRH's expansionist policies — is gone, the true Republic has been restored, and all the diplomatic snafus are cleared away, it would have been more surprising if they hadn't allied together.
  • As of Mission Of Honor, Manticore and Haven have signed both a peace treaty and a military alliance.
• In Dance of the Butterfly, the Felcrafts and Malkuths are rivals with core disparities in philosophy, morals, and methods, yet they somewhat work together against a greater threat.
• Date A Live has Shido and Kurumi teaming up. At this point Shido has no other options, with most of his usual allies and a good chunk of the city's population brainwashed by Miku, while the only exception (Tohka) has been kidnapped by DEM. Kurumi helps out in order to repay Shido for saving her life earlier. Later on, Shido has to work with the aforementioned Miku, who helps rescue Tohka because she wants the latter's power for herself.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The snow war in The Meltdown starts with the Upper Surrey Street kids vs. each other, then all the Upper Surrey Street kids vs. the Lower Surrey Street kids, then all the Surrey Street kids vs. the Safety Patrols, then the Whirley Street kids join the fight and it turns into a free-for-all, and then finally the entire neighborhood vs. the Mingo kids.
• Diogenes Club series:
  • In Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch, the Diogenes Club forms a cautious and temporary alliance with their rivals the Undertaking, a sinister group of The Men in Black who are suspected of succumbing to He Who Fights Monsters, in order to defeat the Great Enchanter, a Diabolical Mastermind plotting to take over and ultimately destroy the world. It's noted that the situation isn't quite as bad, yet, as it got with the previous generation's Great Enchanter, an Omnicidal Maniac who posed such a grave threat that the Diogenes Club and the Undertaking formally combined into a single command structure for the duration and at the final push "no fewer than fifteen of the world's premier magicians, occult detectives, psychic adventurers, criminal geniuses and visionary scientists set aside profound differences" to work together and defeat him.
  • In Cold Snap, the Diogenes Club and what's left of the Undertaking join forces with the Great Enchanter (not the one they fought before, but his successor) to deal with a threat that's going to wipe out the human race. The new Great Enchanter, Derek Leech, does intend to end the world eventually, but in the mean time he has plans that require the human race to stick around. (He's also, it turns out, hoping that once they find out what's going on he'll be able to turn it to his own purposes.)
  • At the climax of Seven Stars, Leech and the Diogenes Club join forces against another threat against the human race, this one involving a dark mage and a repeat performance of the Biblical plagues of Egypt.
• In Dragonlance, black robed mages ally themselves with the good guys every now and then, for example to drive off the Dark Queen in The Legend of Huma and during the War of the Lance. Dragons of Summer Flame was based around this trope. Also Fistandantilus and the Kingpriest used each other for their own goals.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Harry teams up with Lara Raith multiple times over the course of the series to help them reach mutual goals. They do this quite often in fact, to the point at one instance Lara indicates quite clearly she would rather rule with Dresden together than for them to keep fighting each other.
    • Harry has shown that he finds it particularly (or at least very) difficult to resist her, and has even used this fact to taunt a mutual enemy, one of her cousins with whom she shares a bitter rivalry. It was later revealed in Cold Days that if Kincaid had refused to kill him in Changes, his second choice would have been to go Out with a Bang at her... um, ministrations.
  • He does this even more with crime lord John Marcone; it eventually gets to the point where they've had common goals so often, they're more enemies in principle than practice.
  • The novel Turn Coat is one long, extended Enemy Mine sequence between Harry and his former nemesis Donald Morgan, who finds himself needing Harry's help to survive.
  • Skin Game revolves around Harry (unwillingly; he was basically ordered to participate) joining forces with all-around terrible person Nicodemus and a band of other unscrupulous types in order to pull off The Heist, effectively making him their Token Good Teammate. Then he brings in two of his own allies as backup, including The Paladin who's fundamentally opposed to Nicodemus. Naturally, the arrangement falls messily apart at the end. (Again, under orders. Isn't Bothering by the Book fun?)
  • At the end of Peace Talks, and leading into Battle Ground, most of the signatories of the Unseelie Accords — who are constantly jockeying for power — have to forge The Alliance to stand against Ethinu and the Fomor's intention to wage war on the mortal world.
• In the Earthsea novel The Other Wind, representatives of four cultures normally at loggerheads — if not outright enmity — have to pool their respective mythological knowledge in order to figure out the truth about an ancient evil.
• Eclipse Trilogy
  • Badass Israeli Steinfeld (the leader of the New Resistance) has to make the rich oil sheiks help his cause. The former Mossad agents points out that they'll be next if they don't help.
  • Also, the New Resistance unites all kinds of people, from Christian Democrats to Communists and Anarchists—and for some reason, many artists— against the fascist Second Alliance Security Corporation.
• In The Empress Game, it gets complicated. Blame for the conquest of Ordoch can be attributed both to the IDC (which planned it) and to Dolan (who led the Empire there in the first place). Kayla, an Ordochian, is willing to work with an IDC team while opposing Dolan, since she thinks there's a possibility of freeing Ordoch that way. Meanwhile, Tia'tan is pursuing the same objective by working with Dolan against the IDC team. She and Kayla each accuse the other of being a traitor on account of the alliances they made. When they work past that, they team up themselves.
• Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear, the basis for the movie mentioned above.
• In the The Eternal Champion story by Michael Moorcock, humanity has unified solely because of the presence of the alien Eldren. Ekrose, the protagonist states that, absent the Eldren presence, humanity would be at war with itself. This is a key reason for his decision to kill the entire human race
• The Fell of Dark: Subverted. The villains of the story compose multiple factions all interested in Auguste and The Corrupter for different reasons, none of which seem to have his best interests in mind. Auguste does try to make use of this trope only to realize they're all terrible options of an ally, and eventually deciding that the way to finish off the three vampire groups and the Brotherhood was by making the four of them fight amongst themselves while he dealt with Azazel.
• At one point in Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke comes upon Leonard and pulls his gun — but Leonard points out that they're both in the same predicament (trapped in an old laboratory by rubble) and proposes they call a temporary truce and work together to dig themselves out, to which Sousuke agrees. During this time Leonard tries to talk Sousuke into joining his side, but is (obviously) unsuccessful; the truce lasts until they get back to their respective Humongous Mecha.
  Alberto: Let's get something straight, kid. I'm not doing this to help you, your buddies, or because saving humanity gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I may not be privy to all the deep dark secrets behind this covert operation, but I'm positive about one thing: I will be DAMNED if I watch from the sidelines while this megalomaniacal adolescent determines the outcome of the world! That fate will be decided at another place and time, in a final showdown between Big Fire and you IPO vigilantes!
• Sam and Caine of the Gone series (who are ironically brothers) have teamed up twice during intervals of trying to kill each other;
  • They teamed up in Hunger, against Drake Merwin. Sam wanted him dead because he tortured him senselessly and this was enough to piss even him off, and Caine's motive was spontaneous rage for him trying to his girlfriend Diana.
  • In Lies the anti-mutant Human Crew form a temporary alliance with the very-much-mutant Caine Soren and his Coates gang.
  • In Darkness, and continuing into Light, Sam and Caine once again work together to battle Drake and the Gaiaphage, now in the body of Caine's daughter. They actually work quite well when fighting on the same side.
• It is briefly mentioned in the Warhammer 40,000 novel Grey Knights that the underhive gangs of Volcanis Ultor "buried their enmities for one long night" to do battle with a powerful gang of Chaos followers.
• Guardians of the Flame: In The Road to Home Walter and co. team up with a slaver, Toryn, to stop Mykyn, who's gone rogue and is killing slave owners all over the place.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Narcissa Malfoy helps Harry continue faking his death to Lord Voldemort in order to save her family.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • The Surprise Of Haruhi Suzumiya gives us the unexpected revival of Ryoko Asakura who threatened to kill Kyon in the first novel. Only this time, she's been sent by the Data Integration Thought Entity to fill in for an incapacitated Yuki Nagato and protect him from Kuyou. Though her murderous tendencies are still more than apparent...
  • In on of the short stories, the SOS Brigade has to team up with their perceived rival club the Computer Society, in order to stop the plans of the nefarious Student Council President from evicting the Brigade from their clubroom.
• The Hobbit. The dwarves are about to fight a battle with the Lake-men and Wood-elves to determine who will gain Smaug's treasure. Gandalf appears and warns them that an army of goblins and wargs is approaching, and they must join together to fight the evil attackers.
• In The House of Night, Aphrodite and Zoey start out with an Arch-Enemy relationship, which ends up morphing when the two of them need each other and have a common enemy. Zoey and Aphrodite frequently have Jerkass Has a Point moments.
• A typical strategy in The Hunger Games, especially used by the Careers. Involves forming alliances with one or more other tributes to help each other, stay alive longer, and maybe take out other tributes. But of course, these can only be temporary, since the pool of remaining tributes gets smaller and smaller... There's only one victor, after all.
• InCryptid:
  • In the first two books, Verity and her family are hated by the Covenant, while Dominic is part of the Covenant, but they still work together to take down the snake cult. Dominic eventually falls in love with her and defects.
  • In the eighth book, That Ain't Witchcraft, Antimony teams up (or at least calls a truce) with Leonard Cunningham, the future leader of the Covenant, to defeat the Crossroads. He ends the book still enemies with her.
• Of a sort in Insurgent, Cara extremely dislikes Tris (due to Tris shooting a brainwashed Will) but is fully willing to assist in Tris's plans. She even admits to Christina that logically, Tris did what had to be done.
• In Julie Kagawa's The Iron Daughter, Ironhorse allies with Meghan because he considers the Iron King to be false.
• Johannes Cabal:
  • Johannes Cabal the Detective: Johannes and Leonie Barrow find themselves stuck together on an airship where two other passengers are murdered and team up to unravel the mystery. It's tense, since Johannes was a soulless Villain Protagonist in the previous book, but Leonie passes up a chance to report Johannes to the authorities and Johannes, very uncharacteristically of him, risks his life to save hers.
  • The Brothers Cabal: Johannes the Necromancer and his vampire brother Horst team up with five Creature Hunter Organizations to storm the Sorcerous Overlord Big Bad's castle. Johannes is best-informed about the situation and loves to rub the others' noses in it.
• In Last Sacrifice, Rose teams up with Victor Dashkov against the mysterious assassin of Tatiana Ivashkov.
• The point of the League of Magi story "Wait," and ultimately subverted when one of them kills the other.
• Legacy of the Dragokin has three examples:
  • The premise is Baalaria and Drewghaven teaming up to quell raiders produced by civil unrest.
  • Zarracka and Mordak team up because they both hate Daniar.
  • Everyone still alive joins forces against Kthonia.
• In The Legend of Drizzt Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri must team up and fight back to back in an effort to get out of the Underdark at one point.
• The Lord of Bembibre: Seeking allies against the Count of Lemos, Don Álvaro considers allying himself with the mayor of Cornatel, who also hates the Count of Lemos, and even a chief of bandits and outlaws called the Blacksmith.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen: The alliance of the outlawed Malazan commander Dujek Onearm with his enemy Caladan Brood against the omnicidal Pannion Seer in the third volume. It later turns out that Dujek's outlawry was a Xanatos Gambit by Malazan Empress Laseen to win Caladan's support for the war.
• In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novel The Dagger Affair by David McDaniel, UNCLE and THRUSH operatives work together to stop DAGGER, a new organization armed with advanced science. In the end a THRUSH-controlled fighter jet kamikazes the DAGGER base, using sheer momentum to overwhelm its force field. There's a poignant moment where the leader of THRUSH reminds the leader of UNCLE of their former friendship and gives him a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Then he ends the truce ahead of the agreed time, not that anyone expected anything else. We also discover that the full name of THRUSH is the somewhat unwieldy "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity".
• In the second book of the Mistborn trilogy, Vin finds herself working with an enemy — TenSoon, who had assumed the identity of OreSeur, and had been working on behalf of Straff Venture.
  • Then there's Zane, who is first introduced when she notes that she missed fighting with that one guy who is probably an assassin but hasn't seriously tried to kill anyone yet. His first proper appearance is him saving her life from the sidelines as she hadn't realised one of her opponents had atium.
• Otherland has a prominent example of this in the fourth book. After Psycho for Hire John Dread usurps control of the Otherland network, Corrupt Corporate Executive Felix Jongleur, who up until now has regarded the heroes as an annoyance (if he was aware of them at all), finds himself on equal footing with them: trapped in the network and unable to use his godlike powers.
• In A Passage to India, which is set in the British Raj, the religious divisions among native Indians — particularly those between Hindus and Muslims — are only set aside when they find themselves both in conflict with the ruling British authorities. As Dr Aziz says to Cyril Fielding, "We may hate each other, but we hate you more."
• This happens in The Path to War where Tahniya is soul bound to Zan as punishment; they can't stand each other.
• A Pict Song by Rudyard Kipling. "No indeed! We are not strong, But we know Peoples that are..."
• Pilgrennon's Children: Jananin hates Pilgrennon for stealing her Brain/Computer Interface technology and using it for unethical experiments on Designer Babies. But in Pilgrennon's Beacon, Jananin, Pilgrennon, and Dana, the product of one of Pilgrennon's experiments, all have to work together to defeat the supercomputer Cerberus, which controls the government.
• In The Pillars of Reality, Mari and Alain start out thinking of each other as enemies who have to work together to survive. As they get to know each other, however, they begin to realise that they're only enemies in the first place because each of their respective Guilds are either wrong or lying about the other.
• Ready Player One: No matter how much the gunters (both clans and individuals) are competing with each other to find James Halliday's egg, they always gladly put their differences aside to gang up on the Sixers.
• A complicated example occurs in the "Richard Bachman" (actually Stephen King) novel The Regulators. The demon Tak is possessing a young autistic boy, and is somehow using the boy's unique mind to augment and give shape to its supernatural power. Both the boy and the demon are fans of cheap westerns and a Power-Rangers style TV show, both of which the demon uses as inspiration for his means of destroying the town. In the show-within-a-show, the heroes team up with their enemy to stop a something from destroying Earth. Tak channels this as the final assault on the protagonists.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades:
  • Discussed by Demitrio Aristides in volume 4. He characterizes the ancient alliance of humans and demihumans that slew the god of this world as little more than a team-up against a common enemy, though he allows that the now-extinct progenitor demihumans likely played an outsize role in getting the different factions to work together.
  • In volume 7, Professor Vanessa Aldiss is stationed at the entrance to the third layer as the final obstacle for the upperclassmen. This prompts the entire cadre of sixth- and seventh-year entrants to team up just to survive, including political archrivals Alvin Godfrey and Leoncio Echevalria—who end up scoring actual, if minor, wounds against her and winning.
• Happens in the backstory of Remember To Always Be Brave, and shown in with the prequel Cilva, the Roman Republic is called in by the Alliance to aid an uprising in Zesan/Azania's capital city of Cilva. It's not a trap, but its not really an uprising either. It is mused on as a total wreck of a battle. Later on in Remember To Always Be Brave, the Roman Republic and the Alliance of Nations unites to fight the Tenebrae invaders, and Corna turns on the Tenebrae after they use a cult base as a experiment ground for their biological terror weapon.
• The Riftwar Cycle has a few:
  • In A Darkness at Sethanon, the Heroic Prince teams up with the former Evil Chancellor to defend a city against the The Horde.
  • In Honored Enemy, a band of Kingdom raiders allies with a Tsurani patrol in order to survive pursuit from a Moredhel company. The story plays during the war between the Kingdom and the Tsurani and revolves around the tension this causes.
  • In Betrayal at Krondor, the moredhel chieftain Gorath seeks out Prince Arutha to curb another upcoming invasion that he feels would be too costly for his people.
  • In the Chaoswar Saga, the final trilogy, an enemy shows up who is so dangerous that the God of Evil comes in on the side of Good.
• In Rob Roy, Bailie Nicol Jarvie warns Captain Thornton he is kidding himself if he thinks he can depend on Highlanders to capture Rob Roy: they may insult, fight and even kill each other, but they will always be willing to join forces against Lowlanders and Englishmen. Later, he is proven right when the Scottish clans put aside their bloody feuds to rebel against the English Government.
  Captain Thorton: "Make yourself easy, sir. I am in the execution of my orders. And as you say you are a friend to King George, you will be glad to learn that it is impossible that this gang of ruffians, whose license has disturbed the country so long, can escape the measures now taken to suppress them. The horse squadron of militia, commanded by Major Galbraith, is already joined by two or more troops of cavalry, which will occupy all the lower passes of this wild country; three hundred Highlanders, under the two gentlemen you saw at the inn, are in possession of the upper part, and various strong parties from the garrison are securing the hills and glens in different directions. Our last accounts of Rob Roy correspond with what this fellow has confessed, that, finding himself surrounded on all sides, he had dismissed the greater part of his followers, with the purpose either of lying concealed, or of making his escape through his superior knowledge of the passes.
  Bailie Jarvie: "I dinna ken; there's mair brandy than brains in Garschattachin's head this morning—- And I wadna, an I were you, Captain, rest my main dependence on the Hielandmen—- hawks winna pike out hawks' een. They may quarrel among themsells, and gie ilk ither ill names, and maybe a slash wi' a claymore; but they are sure to join in the lang run, against a' civilised folk, that wear breeks on their hinder ends, and hae purses in their pouches."
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Rogues in the House" after Murillo and Conan have broken into Nabonidus's house to kill him, and find that he is not, after all, the Beast Man, they ally with him to deal with it.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, the presence of the Shade forces a temporary truce between Lyrah and Daylen, even though she wants nothing more than to kill him at that point. Any teeth-clenching is purely on her part, however, as he never thinks of her as an enemy and is eager to help.
• This is how Cordelia and Aral got together, in Shards of Honor.
• In E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space, the villain DuQuesne agrees to act as one of the party until they return safely to Earth, even though he wants the hero Richard Seaton dead. Ultimately Seaton makes his best friend hand BOTH his guns over to DuQuesne because DuQuesne is the better shot, and then Seaton and DuQuesne stand side by side and mow down their common enemies until all four guns are empty. In Skylark DuQuesne, DuQuesne enlists Seaton's help in fighting an otherwise unstoppable alien menace and ends up winning the war and saving Seaton's life in the process, though by this time his reasons for wanting Seaton dead no longer apply. The fact that each man at least respects the other's abilities helps.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has some interesting ones. Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth are forced to coexist when Catelyn Stark sends Brienne to trade Jaime for Sansa, but though they start out quite hostile, they've reached a point of sort-of friendship and mutual respect (and maybe more). A more hostile camaraderie briefly exists between Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark; she still hates him, sure, but when it comes down to it they work well together, and she's probably more like him than she'd like to acknowledge. On a larger scale in A Dance with Dragons the Wildlings and the Night's Watch agree to work together against the Others. Many of them aren't happy about this, rendering the alliance extremely tenuous.
  • While they never actually get round to fighting, Stannis Baratheon makes it clear he views Robb Stark as just as much of an enemy as Big Bad Joffrey Baratheon. By Book 5, Robb has been betrayed and killed by some of his own soldiers, while Stannis' forces have been decimated. Subsequently, the Northern soldiers who remain loyal to the Starks join up with Stannis.
  • On the outbreak of war, the Tyrells initially throw their support behind Renly Baratheon. When Stannis assassinates Renly, they jump ship to Joffrey and the Lannisters in order to take revenge on Stannis.
  • Nearly every alliance is this given the infighting and divergent agendas common in Westerosi politics. Forging any alliance is an arduous task and they're very fragile in times of defeat or betrayal — times when they're needed most.
• In the final The Spirit Thief book, Eli, Nico, Josef and Miranda strike an uneasy truce with the Lord of Storms and the Master of the Dead Mountain to stop demons from consuming the world, despite the fact that Lord of Storms and the Master have it out for both one another and the main characters. The Master is pretty much the only side that's happy with the arrangement, as he gains the most out of it.
• This is the plot of Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes Alternate History trilogy. After the British declare war on the Union, they accidentally sack a Confederate town instead of a Union fort (the stars-and-bars flag confuses them). In response, the Union and the Confederacy agree to a cease-fire and, eventually, the Confederacy re-integrates into the USA and abolishes slavery in the face of the British Empire. One of the main criticisms of the trilogy is how easily this happens without too many problems.
• In Shattered Sky, the third book in the Star Shards Chronicles trilogy, the good guys team up with Okoya, the villain of the second book to defeat a greater enemy that threatens to destroy the universe.
• In Streams of Silver, Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri declared a temporary truce in order to join forces against a common enemy (the gray dwarves inhabiting Mithral Hall). Some time later, in Starless Night, Catti-Brie and Entreri teamed up to rescue Drizzt from the drow, who were holding all three of them captive and who would have eventually executed both Drizzt and Entreri. (Or condemned them to a Fate Worse than Death.)
• Reversed in the Star Trek Expanded Universe. In the wake of the Borg invasion, several previously non-aligned minor enemies such as the Tholians join the Typhon Pact in order to leave the Federation and Klingon Empire surrounded by a hostile power. The Tholians, well-known for xenophobia, join for this reason alone.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • While most of the clone troopers went on to serve the empire, the True Mandalorians (a.k.a. the group that nearly destroyed the Galactic Republic 4,000 years ago) fought alongside the rebels to retain their heritage as well as kill those who had betrayed their own kin.
  • Fate of the Jedi:
    • Jedi and the Lost Tribe of the Sith form an alliance (in the titular Allies), to investigate and subdue a feminine Eldritch Abomination named Abeloth. The arrangement doesn't last long, but it does allow Luke's son Ben to pick up a Sith Apprentice Girlfriend...
  • Speaking of Fate of the Jedi, Apocalypse reveals that the Father, the Son, and the Daughter had fought against Abeloth multiple times after she got corrupted. The mere fact that the Son, who is the embodiment of the Dark Side, would ally himself with the Daughter, who is the embodiment of the Light Side, even when they would more often than not fight each other to the death had it not been for the Father's influence would imply that this trope came into play.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy: Mara Jade sees her having to constantly work with Luke as this trope, especially with that not-so-covert wish to kill him. He doesn't see it the same way, though. At the end of the trilogy, they've become Fire-Forged Friends, and by the New Jedi Order series, they're a married Battle Couple.
  • The Hand of Thrawn: Admiral Pellaeon is of sufficient power that when he states it's time for the Empire to sue for peace with the Republic, they sue for peace. However when a conspiracy led by Moff Disra of Bastion, his Dragon (a stormtrooper modified with Thrawn's strategic skill), and a con artist posing as a resurrected Thrawn threatens the entire process, Pellaeon works with agents of the New Republic to help foil the diplomatic crisis engineered by Disra. Additionally, Baron Fell attempts to recruit Luke and Mara as representatives of both powers into forging the exact same sort of alliance with the Chiss against a major undisclosed threat Thrawn had spent his time in "exile" along the Outer Rim preparing to fight, which turns out to be the Yuuzhan Vong.
  • The Truce at Bakura has the Imperials forced to work with the Rebels to defeat the evil Ssi-Ruuk. Once it becomes clear that the aliens are in retreat, the Empire reverts back to their evil selves and re-declares war on the Alliance.
  • A couple of times in the New Jedi Order. In Conquest, Anakin Solo teams up with Yuuzhan Vong warrior Vua Rapuung to rescue his friend Tahiri from a Mad Scientist who is also Rapuung's enemy (and ex-lover). In the last book, The Unifying Force, Han Solo and Boba Fett find themselves briefly fighting side-by-side against Vong warriors. Finally, at the very end of the series, a subversion comes into play — Nom Anor, Recurring Boss for most of the series, allies with the heroes only out of a selfish sense of self-preservation, and immediately tries to flush them out an airlock when he feels they've outlived their usefulness. For his part, he 'does'' eventually Become the Mask of the Prophet, and genuinely leads an uprising of the Shamed Ones (who have come to view the Jedi as saviors) against the rest of the Vong.
  • In Iron Fist, one of the X-Wing Series novels, Admiral Rogriss of the Empire offers a temporary unofficial alliance with Solo and his fleet to hunt down Warlord Zsinj, and then, in his words, they can go back to their personal ideological differences without inviting anyone else to play.
  • Shadows of the Empire:
    • The book reveals that Black Sun has tried to make overtures with the Rebel Alliance, who always rebuffed them. Leia though approaches them to speak in hopes of using their spy network to find out who's behind murder attempts against Luke (unaware that it's Black Sun), using the rationale that the Empire is their common enemy. It does not transpire though.
  • Vader temporarily aids the Rebels against Black Sun, since they both want Luke alive.
• In So I'm a Spider, So What?, the G-Fleet poses enough of a threat that an alliance is formed between the Dustin, Gyurie, Ariel, and Potimas despite their mutual grievances with one another. The alliance is anything but friendly, as one of the first things Potimas does is try to kill Kumoko by giving her a weapon that explodes on use.
• Swarm on the Somme is an AlternateHistory.com story where the opening months of World War I are interrupted by an invasion of a race of intelligent Horde of Alien Locusts called the Grex. Within a month, the sheer threat of the Grex is enough to make all the human nations co-operate. It's still not enough.
• Bertie Wooster and Sir Roderick Glossop team up in Thank You, Jeeves and end up getting along very well, even exchanging invitations to lunch. Bertie notes that he can't be all bad, since he beat up Chuffy's Bratty Half-Pint cousin Seabury.
• In The Trail of Cthulhu, it's revealed that Professor Shrewsbury and Hastur (presented here as Cthulhu's rival brother) have struck an alliance to keep Cthulhu from waking up.
• In The Traitor Son Cycle, the humans and the Wild have been at enmity for over a generation, but an Outside-Context Problem forces them to start to first assist each other from time to time, and then ally — with an implication that they might no longer consider themselves enemies.
• Treasure Island: Long John spells this out to Jim when Jim's captured by the pirates. Silver knows that Jim is the one who knows where the ship is, and torturing it out of him will satisfy his mutinous crew. However he also knows that the Captain's party ceding the stockade and stores and staying out of their way surely means that they know something he does not and have a plan, while at this point the other pirates are one disappointment from killing Silver too. If they find the treasure then he can ransom Jim, but if things do go bad Jim owes him for his protection and can vouch for him with his friends.
• The Twilight Saga: The Cullens (Vegetarian Vampires) and the Quilettes (Werewolves born to kill vampires), had to work together to destroy an army of newborn vampires that were killing people in general and wanted to kill Bella Swan in particular.
• Unintended Consequences by Stuart Woods has Big Bad Ivan Majerov attempt to take over the assets of Stone Barrington through many means, including Stone's murder. He doesn't succeed. The following book, Doing Hard Time, shows his men with roots in The Mafiya plotting to hurt Stone's son, Peter, as revenge. They make the fatal mistake of thinking fugitive-in-hiding Teddy Fay (a serial killer with various skills, including flying planes and speaking Russian) overheard them and try to take him out as well. Teddy kills them, points out their intents to Peter, and takes it on himself to protect the younger man. He leaves behind two other bodies as well before meeting Stone (and finding out Majerov's second, Vlad, aka "The Viper" has also arrived, and the two men put together a plan to take both Russians out of the picture permanently. Teddy is able to kill The Viper in his room with a bullet, and poses as a pilot to kill Majerov himself with a syringe of potassium. As this saves Peter's life, these acts later lead to Stone using his pull with President Will Lee to arrange for a presidential pardon for Teddy.
• And in the Warchild Series, Captain Azarcon, a Space Marine, and Niko, human sympathizer of the alien resistance work together to rescue hostages and capture gunrunners. This collaboration leads to the end of the war... for a time, anyway.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • In William King's novel Space Wolf, the Marines chose Ragnar and Strybjorn for Marines when they were fighting each other to the death, and both were mortally wounded. Ragnar's desire for Revenge is kept at bay by the knowledge that the Marines will not let him. Finally, when they are fighting Chaos Space Marines, Strybjorn saves Ragnar's life, and shortly thereafter goes down. Ragnar realizes that he neither should nor does want Strybjorn to die; he sends the others on and stays to treat and bring Strybjorn with them.
  • The first Ciaphas Cain novel, For the Emperor, forces the Imperial Guard into an uneasy truce with a Tau diplomatic security contingent because neither side considers the crappy backwater planet Gravalax worth getting into an all-out war over. It turns into Enemy Mine after the two sides discover there's a genestealer cult trying to provoke that war, and the Tau aid the Guard in restoring order. The suicide squad Cain puts together from condemned Guardsmen joins up with a Tau pathfinder unit down below, while on the surface, a Tau Hammerhead hover-tank helps the 597th break through a traitor PDF position.
  • History Repeats in the ninth novel, The Greater Good, where the Tau and Guard start out fighting, then are forced to join forces when their war is rudely interrupted by a tyranid hive fleet.
  • Subverted in World Engine — after realizing that both the Astral Knights and Turakhin are there for Hequroth's blood (engine coolant?), the two simply decide to ignore each other until the Overlord's dead.
  • In another Space Marine Battles novel, Malodrax, Lysander is disgusted to find an ally in a daemon prince, but goes with it, as he wants revenge on Thul and Shalhadar wants to teach the Iron Warrior his place.
  • In the short story Enemy of My Enemy, a Tyranid invasion on a world currently being contested between the Imperial Guard and an Ork WAAAGH results in the Imperials and the Orks actually teaming up to fight the Tyranids. Whilst the humans are, understandably, very uncertain about the whole thing, the orkish Blue-and-Orange Morality allows them to shift between enemy and ally without the slightest hesitation. In fact, the two work together so well that they manage to actually stop the Tyranids. And then the Orks launch a strike against the Imperials once the Tyranid threat is gone. The Ork warlord Takitus almost seems apologetic to have won their war in this way, especially as he starts to realize that his Imperial counterpart actually hadn't been planning to betray them.
• In Warrior Cats, rival cats and Clans occasionally put aside their enmity in order to take on a greater threat, such as the four forest Clans standing together to take on BloodClan despite some of the leaders, Leopardstar and Blackfoot, being former foes of Firestar. They eventually make it a law in the Warrior Code to require it to happen.
• In The Wheel of Time, by the end of the story everyone has to grudgingly accept that in order to fight the Last Battle, they need to work with the Seanchan. The Seanchan want nothing more than to take over the entire continent and enslave all the channelers they can, but because they are all opposed to the destruction of existence, they must work together. Characters also accept that they have to work with them sooner than the Last Battle because their military might is so formidable that sometimes it's the only way they can actually accomplish their goals.
• The White Rose by Glen Cook. In the final battle the Lady — sorceress leader of the northern empire — needs the help of the white rose to take down the dominator, her husband and a much better sorcerer. The white rose creates a area where magic cannot be used and therefore is vital to taking down the greatest sorcerer in known history.
• Without Warning: sees the entire USA vanish (well, technically an energy field kills everyone inside its bounds) except Hawaii, Alaska, a tiny slice of Washington State, the US Navy abroad and the forces poised to invade Iraq, and the military base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. In the absence of instructions from both their governments, American and Cuban soldiers work together to provide disaster relief.
• Worldwar, by Harry Turtledove. Aliens invade in 1942. The Axis are working with the Allies. Another one occurs between the Jews in Europe and the Race. Aliens who never figured out discrimination or Nazi Germany. Played with in the sense that they aren't quite sure who'd be worse for mankind. (The Jews play it both ways, working with the Race or the Germans depending on who's a bigger threat at the time.)
• In World War Z, after the zombie outbreak Israel pulls back from the Palestinian territories and offers asylum to any uninfected Palestinian refugees, both sides agreeing to cooperate in the face of an apocalyptic disaster. When the outbreak is contained they form a permanent truce and Israel agrees to a two-state solution.

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