That he's an entertaining asshole. lol I think by the end, if he could have proved to everyone that Light is Kira, he would have been less interested in putting him away and having him executed than he would have been keeping him in his own custody to have forever. And that may just be my shipping goggles there, but I truly do believe that. Even without shipping them, he was truly his only equal. And while he may have been lying about "Light-kun is my first and only friend", I think he was also lying to himself about it being a lie at all. That's the thing about being a chronic liar, you become one of the people that you lie to. I think he had more to do with his successors than Near told the SPK he did in the oneshots. If he didn't, Near wouldn't have been able to make a mask and figure that looked like him, Mello wouldn't have known any backstory to write the novel with, and Beyond wouldn't have been able to imitate him to the point of outright parody the way he did. Is it CANON to imagine L as the Wammy Boys' distant but still available older brother the way I do? No, but it makes more SENSE than them never seeing him. I don't think he came by the orphanage as often after he hit adulthood, but I do think he still came by, and I do think they knew him. (and I suspect Near telling the SPK otherwise was just him guarding his own feelings) I think that L never realized he himself was essentially being used by Watari (I would fight that old man if Rem hadn't finished him off herself), as he was the closest thing he had to a parent after losing his own. And judging from how easy it was for him to pick Misa's pocket and steal her phone, I can easily imagine before Watari he had to steal to survive. Possibly living on the streets after losing his family.
