For the 5+ headcanons for an AU, Eobard kills Henry instead of Nora?
Ooooh, I do like this scenario but I don't think I've actually tried writing anything for it myself before. Hmmmmm....
So I think one of the reasons why Henry was unable to prove his innocence was because he was a Doctor and MDs are taught you stabilize a puncture wound - you do not remove it until surgery is gonna happen. Henry just saw his wife get stabbed, was possibly concussed, and was reacting with instinct born of years of medical school and practice - he would have grabbed the hilt of the knife to keep it stable and minimize further damage. Nora, however, was a realtor so she probably would have reacted very differently to seeing Henry stabbed and dying.
Picking up with that, on the fateful night in question the Reverse Flash bursts in - phasing through the front door with the Flash hot on his heels. And finds Henry first, in the living room gathering trash and dishes left out to take into the kitchen while Nora's in the kitchen sticking a few plates from dinner into the dishwasher. The fight circles around Henry, Eobard threatening him and Barry trying to stop Eobard before things escalate further and Henry stuck at the eye of the lightning storm with no way out. Nora doesn't dare try to get to close but she's screaming Henry's name. And then little Barry comes down the stairs.
Henry yells for Nora to take Barry and run. And she doesn't think twice, that's exactly what she tries to do. She loves Henry but this is their son. Barry comes first for both of them.
Unfortunately the moment Nora reaches child Barry is when Eobard comes to a stop to stare ominously at them both, but mostly Barry. Speedster Barry makes a split second choice, grabs both Barry and Nora, and runs them to safety. Removing them from the direct threat of Eobard... but leaving Henry where he was. By the time Nora and Barry get back to the house, Henry's dead and the cops have arrived.
Nora is, of course, suspect number one. She endures interrogation from the police where they try to get her to say she killed Henry or that she was just protecting herself from her abusive husband - AKA slandering Henry in hopes of getting a murder confession from Nora. And she's pissed. Demands her lawyer and then keeps her mouth shut. And eventually she gets her phone call and her lawyer and release from custody though she's still the main suspect.
She finds out Joe was... sort of questioning Barry without her present and is pissed off. He did not have the legal authority to question her son without her present and well... that is not a friendship that is going to survive the circumstances, though I see them mending bridges eventually maaaany years later when the truth comes out. Never the same though.
At any rate, the police ultimately can't prove there wasn't a break in that night, Nora's fingerprints are not on the murder weapon that had been cleaned prior to the murder but certainly not after, and so while the city makes a fair attempt at prosecuting her anyway ultimately Nora's defense - that she grabbed Barry and ran from an armed intruder - wins in court.
Nora and Barry move out of their home and into a new place across town. They're still in Central City and Nora's still a realtor, but far enough away that Barry's in a completely different Elementary -> Junior High -> High School path that means he won't be sharing schools with Iris through any of it. Social media is still pretty young at this point, I think even Facebook was something you had to get invited into if you weren't in college. He and Iris try to stay in touch but it's hard and her dad thinks his mom is a murderer and his mom thinks her dad is just another asshole cop who won't do due diligence at a crime scene. Which Barry is very much against repeating where Iris can hear. It's awkward all around. They wind up making new friends and drifting apart.
Barry does not become a CSI here. The impact of his father's murderer never being caught, his mother nearly being railroaded by police and DAs that didn't want to hear the truth, his mother's justifiable mistrust of the police impacting his friendship with Iris... it all impacts Barry's developmental years and he chooses instead to become a lawyer. A public defender.
Eobard is livid, clearly this is a personal affront to him. He lined everything up to ensure Barry got the best scholarships and grants for going to college for forensic science and he's trying to be a lawyer???? Throws off everything, how dare he. Sets Eobard back an entire year because Barry takes a year longer in college than expected and then he can't guarantee Barry will be somewhere the lightning bolt of destiny can reach him (like a lab with a leaky skylight...). Hartley has no idea how close he came to being fired for finding the flaw in the accelerator but Eobard uses fixing the 'flaw' an excuse to delay things a year and moves Hartley into a management position where he won't find 'flaw take two' a year later.
At any rate, the accelerator does still go off earlier than it originally would have and Barry still gets the lightning bolt of destiny and not unlike Joe, Nora reluctantly let's Dr. Wells take her son to STAR Labs for monitoring and medical care that won't break the bank.
Barry wakes up and gets to keep the sweat shirt.
Metas have been popping out of the woodwork for months and STAR Labs has devised a semi-reliable method of testing for the meta gene. Meaning that some metas are being accused of crimes on the basis of being a meta in the wrong place at the wrong time. Barry is... not impressed with how STAR Labs is handling the fallout of their fuck up.
While Barry does agree to be the Flash, he's being a lot more choosy about when he uses his powers to stop criminals. Some of them he winds up being the Public Defender for, having to defend and empathize with the very criminals he helped take down as the Flash. No private pipeline prison here.
He's also defending falsely accused metas and eventually opens his own - small - practice as both a criminal defense lawyer for metas and practicing some civil law to help metas having their rights violated.
But it's in the middle of all this that Iris and Barry are reunited. While she's impressed by the Flash, it's Barry Allen public defender who really intrigues her. They clash at first, initially glad to see each other but then maybe Iris repeats something Joe's said about criminal metas and Barry just. Is not having it. Sure his crush on her is alive and well but she's better than just assuming all metas must be bad. They're victims. He's a victim. And whatever choices they make, good or bad, are theirs. Not a product of the circumstances that caused their DNA to be altered - violated - against their will.
And Iris listens and recognizes that she needs to form her own opinions instead of letting her dad dictate his own to her. Also, Barry is hot when he's passionate about something, not what she would have expected from her childhood bestie. So while Barry may have fallen in love first, Iris falls harder as it were and pursues him. Giving us both the cute childhood crush from Barry of the show canon and the Iris knows her own mind and feelings and who she wants to date from the comics that the show replaced with everyone and their cat insisting they know better what she's thinking and feeling than she does. (Am I bitter... maybe...)
Of course in the background the Reverse Flash is gearing up to wreck everything Barry's worked for in order to finally go home...
Nora lives and lawyer Barry all in one AU, I may have to write some snippets for this idea... :D
