Work Text:
Statement from Buckingham Palace
It is with deep sadness that Buckingham Palace announces the death of His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, who passed away peacefully today following a long illness.
The Prince died with his husband Alexander Claremont-Diaz, by his side.
Her Majesty the Queen and the entire Royal Family are profoundly saddened by this loss.
The Queen asks for the privacy of his husband to be respected during this difficult time of mourning.
Alex reads it three times. The words blur together, the formal language feeling unreal.
Passed away peacefully. Following a long illness.
As if it were something distant and abstract instead of the devastating truth of the room he'd just walked out of.
He had been there, holding Henry's hand when it happened.
For months the possibility had hung over him like a storm. Every chemotherapy session, every hospital corridor, every tired smile Henry tried to pass off as reassurance. Alex had known that this was coming.
But knowing it was coming hadn't prepared him for the moment it finally did.
Alex has dragged the chair close enough to the bed that his knees pressed lightly against the mattress. Close enough that he could keep his hand wrapped around Henry’s without reaching.
Henry had pancreatic cancer for 13 months. They'd known for 4 months that he wasn't going to make it. He entered end of life care a couple days ago though Alex isn't sure exactly how many it’s been. All the days seem to have drawn together.
The room was dim except for the lamp on the bedside table. Outside the windows the city of New York had just started to come to life.
Henry’s hand is very light in his.
Alex turns it slightly, tracing the shape of the knuckles with his thumb. He’d been doing that for the last hour, maybe longer. Time has gotten strange lately. It stretches and folds in on itself.
Henry’s fingers twitch faintly.
“Careful,” Henry murmurs, voice thin but still unmistakably his. “If you keep looking at me like that, darling, I might begin to suspect you fancy me.”
Alex lets out a soft, shaky laugh.
Henry’s eyes are half-open, unfocused with exhaustion, but there’s the ghost of a smile there.
“You’re ridiculous,” Alex says quietly.
“Mm. Terrible flaw.”
The words come slowly.
Alex studies him.
He tries to take it all in the way someone memorizes a place they’re about to leave forever. The slope of Henry’s nose. The faint line between his brows that never quite went away. The way his hair curls a little at the temples now that it’s grown back thinner and softer.
He leans forward slightly, resting his other hand against Henry’s chest.
Even through the cotton of the shirt he can feel how narrow it’s gotten. The steady rise and fall is shallow but still there.
Alex closes his eyes for a moment just to feel it.
He tries to memorize that too - the rhythm of Henry breathing. The faint warmth of his skin. The smell of the grass and fresh linen Alex had assumed he would get to enjoy forever.
Henry shifts weakly.
“You’re staring again,” he whispers.
“Yeah.”
A pause.
“Just… looking.”
Henry hums quietly like he understands.
The breathing changes a little while later.
Alex notices it immediately. The pauses between breaths stretch longer, like the space between waves pulling back from the shore.
He tightens his hand around Henry’s.
“I’m here,” he says softly.
Henry’s eyes move toward him, unfocused but trying.
“Alex.”
“Yeah.”
It comes out rough.
Henry squeezes his hand.
It’s very faint, barely any pressure at all, but Alex feels it. Every bit of it.
For a moment Henry seems to gather himself.
His lips move.
Alex leans closer, bending until their foreheads nearly touch.
“I love you,” Henry murmurs, the words barely there.
Alex breathes out something that might be a laugh and might be a sob.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”
Then, because he can’t not say it-
“I love you too.”
Henry’s mouth curves the smallest amount, like he’s satisfied with the answer.
His hand relaxes in Alex’s.
The next breath comes slowly.
Then another.
And then nothing.
It takes Alex a few seconds to realize.
The room hasn’t changed. The lamp still glows softly on the bedside table. A car passes somewhere down the street.
But the rise and fall under Alex’s palm is gone.
“Henry?” he whispers.
The quiet stretches.
Alex presses his forehead gently against Henry’s temple and sits there for a long moment before he reaches for the call button the nurse left on the table.
His voice is calm when the nurse answers through the small speaker.
“I think… I think he’s gone.”
“Okay,” the nurse says gently. “I’ll be right there.”
Alex sets the button down.
He doesn’t move from the chair.
He keeps holding Henry’s hand.
The apartment feels different already. Not louder or emptier exactly, just still in a way it wasn’t before.
The nurse comes, checks gently, says the words that make it official. She squeezes Alex’s shoulder before she leaves him alone again.
After that there’s only quiet.
Alex sits beside the bed with Henry’s hand in his, the lamp still on, the city moving somewhere far away outside the windows.
He doesn’t leave the room.
Not for a long time.
Eventually he notices Henry’s skin cooling under his fingers.
Alex rubs his thumb once more over Henry’s knuckles, the way he has all night.
Then he just sits there in the soft light of the brownstone, very still, for the first time in a long time completely alone.
The days that follow pass in a strange blur.
Alex doesn’t feel like he’s moving with it.
He had known this was coming. Four months of knowing, of counting down, of trying to make peace with something that was never going to make sense.
Nothing could have prepared him for Henry simply not being.
For the way the world keeps going like something fundamental hasn’t been removed from it.
There are meetings Alex barely remembers attending. Condolence letters arriving in stacks so tall they rival only the empire states building. Alex forgets that before Henry was his husband, he was the beloved Prince of England.
Henry had insisted long ago that when the time came, the funeral should be private. No spectacle or media, or grand public procession. Just the people who he loved the most.
The arrangements are made quietly.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, someone asks Alex if he would like to speak.
Under any other circumstances, the question would have been absurd. Alex Claremont-Diaz has given thousands of speeches in campaign halls and press conferences and on stages in front of crowds stretching farther than he can see.
But this one feels impossible. The idea of standing in front of a room and speaking about Henry, about a world that somehow still exists without him in it, feels impossible.
He cannot afford to break down in the middle of the one thing of Henry’s that is still left.
He had initially said no without second thought.
June and Nora don't push him at first.
They've been keeping him company. They’re not fixing anything because truly they can’t. They help him answer messages and letters he can't quite face, sit with him through long evenings full of tears when the lack of a certain blonde around the house feels unbearable.
They’re just there, filling the space so it doesn’t feel completely hollow.
Eventually though, they say something that cuts through the grief that he cannot quite ignore.
They remind him that if he doesn't speak now, he may carry that silence with him forever- it may haunt him for the rest of his life. He had tried to think about anything but Henry the past days because it was simply too painful. They understood that.
But one day they assured him, when the grief has softened enough to let Henry’s memory breathe again, he might wish he’d stood up and said something- anything- about the person Henry was .
And slowly, reluctantly he begins to understand they might be right.
He sits at Henry's oak desk with a blank piece of paper laid out in front of him, pen hovering uselessly in his hand. He’s running out of time- the funeral is only 2 days away now but Alex has mustered every last shred of willpower to do this one last thing for his everything.
The thought crosses his mind. If he has ever written anything worth reading , it was because Henry was there to help him. It makes Alex laugh weakly.
All he longs to do is reach over, stupidly and instinctively to his phone and call the love of his life. And then he would talk. He would talk and talk and talk, about how none of this is fair and how he doesn’t know what to say and how the words feel wrong in his mouth. Henry always had a far better way with words than he ever did.
Henry would fix it. He always did.
Alex had so much love left to give and no where to put it.
After a long moment, he begins to write.
If I have ever written anything in the past worth reading, it had been with the help of Henry.
He had always been horrified at my English- he coined me as being ‘A'lingual. I could never get a word in without him interrupting to fix it, and honestly, I don't think he'd be very happy about me writing this without him, but here it goes.
When we say someone has died, especially in tragic circumstances, the usual phrases come tumbling out
he was a wonderful person
he could have been great had life given him the chance
and of course
life could never be the same without him.
All these things are true, but of Henry there are many other things to say, both painful and loving that all the usual consoling clichés seem to turn to ashes and dust in our mouths even as we speak them.
Henry was unique, many faceted, deeply caring and thoughtful, playful and earnest. He was both complex and straightforward at the same time . There are many Henrys we will all remember, each of them living on differently in the people who knew him. He was not someone who could be summed up neatly in one sentence.
There was the creative Henry, who wrote and drew and played piano. Who could quote Byron and politics and history in the same breath. He had an incredible ability to express himself with such intelligence and clarity of mind.
Catherine found an old Eton school report of his which characteristically described Henry writing tales and analogies far beyond his years, only age 13, yet his teacher also expressed her frustration that Henry applied his daydreaming talent as soon as the maths books rolled out.
Allied to this was the meticulous perfectionist Henry who corrected, redrafted and rewrote everything five times simply because wording mattered.
If you are lucky enough to have received a Henry birthday card, you will be familiar with his hallmark ; his prolific use of tippex. And of course he would be angry at me if I didn't mention his Jane Austen book reviews he was ever so proud of, that surely took longer to write than the books themselves.
There was the generous Henry who would never buy only one present when six would do, and would use a third of his luggage allocation every time we went away for gifts to bring back for his family and friends and his kids at the shelter.
He never believed in doing anything half way when it concerned someone he cared about.
There was the quirky Henry too, though he would hate me for saying it. The Henry who pretended to be terribly dignified but absolutely wasn't when he was comfortable. Who insisted he could neither think nor drive whilst he was wearing a top hat .
The healthy eater who simultaneously found jaffa cakes irresistible . Who named his dog David and considered the great British bake off his comfort show.
The Henry who insisted return of the Jedi was the superior Star Wars movie when really deep down he was a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wanted the happily ever after. (Your still wrong about that)
There was the brave Henry. The Henry whose strength of character and sarcastic sense of humour transcended all the pain and suffering his illness brought him right up until his last day. Whose quiet courage carried him through things that should have broken him.
The Henry who faced pain and fear with a kind of stubborn grace that I don't think I will ever come to understand.
And yet alongside these versions of Henry , was the Henry that was hidden from many.
Anxious about the future and what it held. Angry with the God that he didn't even know if he believed in ,for the injustice not in his own torment and suffering ,but in the fact that I would be left alone afterwards.
I miss all those Henrys so much, more than I know how to explain. And here, words start to feel too impotent to express what I feel.
He was the most remarkable person I have ever known.
He gave me direction when I didn't know where I was going. He brought calm when everything around me was chaotic. And he gave love with such unique care and sensitivity that even when the world seemed a dangerous frightening place, a single smile from Henry and you knew everything was going to be alright.
And so much of Henry's love and serenity remains with me.
Despite everything, the pain and the worry in his last year, the 8 years we spent together were the happiest of my life.
When I think of Henry I do not think of loss but of him teasing me, correcting my grammar, rolling his eyes at something ridiculous I have said. Of him laughing and joking and caring and giving so much of himself to others. I think of his kindness and selflessness and loyalty . The way he cared for people so instinctively that it felt like second nature.
Henry has left a void in my world that nothing will ever quite fill. My sense of grief and loss is so profound it feels impossible to bear.
There are moments when the unfairness of it all pressed so heavily on my chest it is difficult to breathe and it would be easy to feel angry at the world for taking him so soon. But when I remember Henry and the life we shared and the people we loved , I cannot help but think of myself as incredibly fortunate.
I feel unbelievably lucky that I ever got to know him at all, let alone to be loved by him. And it is for this reason that I can’t stay angry with God, if he’s up there, because perhaps that is the way he evens things out in the end.
If that is the balance of things, then loving him was worth every unfair moment that followed and I would choose it in infinite lifetimes, even knowing how the story ends.
That gift of loving someone like Henry, even for a little while, is something that can never truly be taken away.
If you are somewhere listening to Henry, I hope you're still correcting my grammar.
He makes it through the speech without crying by sheer force of will.
That feels like the only victory he’s going to get today. But that’s ok.
He’d had Henry’s soft voice in the back of his head the entire way through, tethering him onto reality, gently reminding him as he often had in his last few months that he was going to be alright in the end . Alex worked so tirelessly to memorise every aspect of his loves voice and he hates how fast it’s slipping away.
The second it’s over, he goes straight to his dad. He tucks himself in close, dropping his head against his shoulder, and it’s so instinctive it almost startles him .It’s like he’s 12 again.
The first sob catches him off guard.
The next one doesn’t.
But nestled in his dads shoulder something happens. His dad’s arms tighten around him, one hand coming up to the back of his head, steady and sure.
“I’ve got you mijo,” he says, low and certain, like it’s finally something Alex doesn’t need to question.
Alex’s grip on him tightens- he’s holding on to the only solid thing left. The grief is still there but there’s something else too.
Not relief. Not anything that simple.
Just the quiet, unfamiliar sense that he doesn’t have to carry it by himself.
He doesn’t believe it yet. But he doesn’t push it away, either.
Alex just hopes he did Henry justice, and made him proud.