Disclaimer: I don't own legal rights to any of the copyrighted Resident Evil stuff in this story.
"And so the little blonde girl helped Doctor Salvador remove the tree stump from his front yard. Then he invited her inside for a cup of hot cocoa, and they became friends."
Her smile could light up the entire room, even when it was forced. There was something troubled behind Ashley Graham's saucer-wide hazel eyes as she turned the book so the circle of children around her could get a good look at the illustrations. Her likeness was enjoying a steaming mug with a large man with a burlap sack over his head and a huge chainsaw in one hand.
"The end."
One of the members of Ashley's entourage leaned close to Will Bard's ear.
"What are you even doing here?" he asked. "Isn't your part in this already over?"
"I have as much right to the fans' reactions as she does," Will said.
"How can you see their reactions," the other man said with a bitter laugh, "when you're just staring at her?"
Will tried to stand up taller to conceal his reaction, taking his glasses off and wiping the lenses on his shirt.
Ashley was still smiling, signing copies of her book, occasionally hugging one of her young fans when they would ask for it. The whole time, members of the press were eating it all up, snapping photos and footage.
She rose from her stool in the reading nook of this city's Toy Uncle, brushing the dust off the dark green wool dress pants she had paired with an orange blouse and a slightly darker orange blazer. In her mid-thirties, there was something impish, but pleasant, about her features. Short but curvy figure. Long nose with a distinct upward curve at the tip. Wide, pointy ears. She brushed her golden bangs to the side and tucked the hair behind one of them.
"Why, hello there, Ashley Graham," she said to Will, smiling at the joke.
It was, effectively, his pen name, after all.
"It's a picture book," Will said. "The illustrator deserves more credit than I do."
"Technically, he gets more credit than you do," Ashley said. She walked over to the wall of plush animals. "The Doctor Salvador and Del Lago plushies turned out sooo cute. It almost makes me forget they actually tried to murder me."
She sat down among the plush versions of her worst nightmares, wrapping one arm around the burlap-wearing chainsaw-wielder and the other around the monstrous amphibian, then held out her cellphone, struggling to find the perfect angle for her selfie.
Without saying anything, Will took the little pink phone from her hand and snapped the picture for her, handing it back so she could admire it.
She gave him one of those smiles, the kind that made him go weak in the knees.
"What would I do without you?" She turned her attention to the phone. "All for the 'Gram." She looked down at her blazer. "I should tag the designer. Am I the designer? I think this is one of my labels. Which label is it?"
Her smile turned into a thin straight line when she looked up at Will's frown.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "You're not upset that you're not getting to sign copies of the book, are you?"
"I wouldn't make a very good ghost writer if I let that bother me."
Ashley arched her eyebrows at him.
"OK," Will admitted. "Maybe it bothers me a little. But it's not mostly that."
"What is it, then?"
"It's been years since the Las Plagas Incident was declassified," Will said. "And you decided to tell your side of the story through a series of children's books."
"Kids love them," Ashley said. "This was Book 4 in the 'The Little Girl and the Ganados' series, and you see how they're eating them up."
"I think your adult readers would really like to hear more about it, too," Will said. "But you keep avoiding the subject for your biographies."
"Autobiographies," Ashley corrected. "Since we're publishing them under my name, you said we can call them that."
"You're avoiding the point."
"How's my Twitter looking?" Ashley asked, rising from her perch and making a pointed effort to change the subject.
"There's a reason you have me handle your social media, too," Will said.
"Let me guess," she said. "All my ats are saying I'm annoying, they want me dead, they want to fuck me, or they both find me annoying and want to fuck me. Not to mention all the creepy comments about my . . ." She looked down at her chest. "Ballistics."
"Huh?"
"Like you said, there's a reason I handed my social media over to you. I can barely even stand to read the comments on my Instagram."
"I'm just saying, if you were willing to talk about your experiences in Europe, maybe people would actually read your more adult-oriented books."
"And then we could sell more copies, and you could make more royalties off of them."
"Ashley, you know it's not about that," Will insisted. "I don't care about the money. I don't even care that nobody knows I'm writing these for you. All I want is people to get to know the real you. The philanthropy and causes you've championed. If you'd just address the one thing everyone thinks of when they hear your name . . . "
"You know proceeds from every one of the Ganados books goes to my charities."
"I know, but . . ."
Her expression was downright stern at this point.
"I'm not comfortable talking about it," she said. "Maybe I wish I was, but I'm not. I prefer talking about it like this, where the man with the chainsaw is just a local doctor doing yardwork, and the big scary lizard is just a harmless pet, and the Verdugos and Regeneradors are all just cuddly and misunderstood. Instead of the reality, that still wakes me up screaming in the middle of the night. And I like the brave little blonde girl who befriends them all, instead of the damsel in distress that needed to be rescued from them." She sighed. "Even if I did spill all the traumatizing details, they'd still just keep calling me a ditz and a slut."
"It's just . . ."
That I wish you could talk to me about them, even if it was off the record. Will wished he could say the words, but they just wouldn't come.
Ashley put her hand on his arm.
"As for your measly royalties," she said. "Dinner's on me tonight. We have another hit children's book to celebrate."
Then the daughter of former President Graham disappeared into the swarm of bodyguards and reporters eager for a sound bite.
A/N – More to come. Maybe. Want to include more Resident Evil characters, and Ashley won't be the only central character. But I feel like Ashley Graham frankly gets too much hate as a character. Sure, she's an escort character, but RE4 manages to be great despite being one big game-length escort mission. I wanted to do something Ashley-centric, but give her an adventure where she's not just a prop for Leon, set long enough after the events of RE4 for her to be more mature, and possibly even badass.