Title: Tunisia

Rating: T

Summary: It's always been his dream to go to Tunisia. Why? What did he think he'd find there?

A/N: Here's a new drabble about an underapprciated minor character, Gunther Milch. He's always interested me, so I decided to write this. I actually really like this one. It's pretty long, and I wish I had the space (and motivation) to add more transitions and explination, but I don't, so there! R&R, please. Taking requests.


His first night in Tunisia, he hired a prostitute.

Gunther didn't think the novelty would wear off that fast, but it did. There wasn't much to see in Tunisia. The coast was lined for miles with identical houses, the monotony only occasionally punctuated by high rise hotels. A few upscale stores and restaurants clustered near the coast to attract the residents of the beach houses, but behind the facade of prosperity was a dirty, forgotten community. Dirt roads ran through a town that was comprised mostly of low concrete buildings. A few of the impoverished denizens milled about, drawling in Arabic or French. The whole scene was quite depressing.

Having nothing to do, Gunther wandered the streets for a few hours. Darkness fell quickly on the town, and most people returned to their homes. A few cracked, rusted streetlamps flickered to light. He felt lonely under the star-studded sky, and he wanted company. He knew he would have to hire it.

A young scantily woman was leaning casually on the side wall of a gas station. She was tan and attractive, better than most of the whores in Germany. Gunther approached her. She smiled and winked coyly, then said something that he couldn't understand. He shrugged at her, but she didn't seem deterred. She grabbed his hand, placed in on her chest over her breasts, winked again, and nodded at him. He nodded back. Her smile broadened and she led him to a dilapidated warehouse a few blocks away. She opened a rusty door and pulled him inside.

The room they were in was cramped. A small bed took up one nearly half of the room, and a chest sat on the floor nearby, using the rest of the space. The walls were decorated with brightly colored pieces of paper and cloth and cheap plastic jewlery. The girl pulled off what could barely be considered a shirt. She pushed him down onto the bed and began dancing seductively in his lap, chattering away in a language she knew he couldn't understand.

Gunther let his mind wander as he went through the motions. There wasn't much for him to do, anyway. She took control: kissing him, unbuttoning his shirt, massaging his bare, wrinkled shoulder blades. He closed his eyes and sighed softly at the pleasure of her touch. This was comforting, what he was used to. Maybe Tunisia wouldn't be so bad after all. Tunisia...

Tunisia. His brow wrinkled.

What was he doing here, anyway? What did he expect to find? His parents? No. He'd never find them here; he knew that, he'd always known that. How would he? It had been decades since they'd left him, and even if they were still here, if they had used their real names, if they'd come to Tunisia at all and not Andorra or Nice or Venice, he would still never find them.

What he really wanted was an answer.

Why had his parents abandoned him? What was their reason? What was so wonderful here that they decided to abandon their own son in a train locker? So far he hadn't found a thing.

Thinking of his time in the locker made the crowded room suddenly seem even smaller. Gunther felt dizzy and sick. He desperately pushed the thought from his mind and turned back to the girl. She seemed anxious to get on with it, so he obliged her. If he closed his eyes, things were almost normal; she was just a filthy German prostitute and he was back in Dusseldorf and not here in this stupid, poor, ugly country where, now he realized, he didn't really want to be. When it was over, he put his pants back on silently. He was ready to leave, but the woman was looking up at him expectantly, holding her hand out. Oh. How was he supposed to pay her? Embarrassed, he put a hand up to scratch the back of his neck and felt something. It was a small gold chain, something he'd taken off of Gustav's neck after the accident. It had belonged to their mother.

Tears stung the corner of Gunther's eyes. With shaking hands, he hurriedly unclasped the chain, careful not to yank it in half, and stuffed it into the whore's hand. He ran out before she could say anything.

When he got as far away from the warhouse as he could, his knees buckled and he threw up.