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Being chained like the criminal L believed him to be was difficult for Light in many ways. The handcuffs were the physical embodiment of the suspicion that hung over him like a heavy shroud, and they made him feel almost as if he was already condemned for Kira's crimes, just as the detective's attitude toward him did, and he was, and he had payed for them already, with his imprisonment, with this invasion of privacy, with the alienation from the man he so wanted friendship with, even now that they were spending every second of every day together, now that Light needed a friend the most. He paid and he accepted it as necessary, and he didn't let anyone see what a toll it was taking on him.
It wasn't just his pride, though that had taken quite a hit, it was the fact that someone could be so convinced that he was capable of such evil, someone he respected and wanted to gain the respect of. It was that someone could look at him and look for a monster beneath his skin, someone Light looked at and felt...just felt. It chafed much more painfully than the metal against his skin.
Conversations with L were only reminders of their situation, every word measured and calculated against Kira's profile, so Light kept them short and impersonal despite the words accumulating inside of him, clogging his head, his chest, making him feel as if, if not let out, they would cause him to burst.
Something in him had changed. He hadn't noticed it at first, with the rush and confusion of the conditions of his release, and the preoccupation of the days spent adjusting to the new lifestyle, but once he had, he felt it like a gaping wound. It was as if a piece of him was missing, a kind of innocence, and he was left seeing the world in a completely different light. He began to question things he'd had an unshakable faith in, began to question himself. Reality had changed around him, the inherent good of people revealed as a fantasy, the rot as the underlying truth, the only inevitable outcome.
He turned a blind eye, for the sake of the case and of his sanity, and put his last hope for humanity into catching Kira, as if a part of him didn't whisper that L already had.
Integrity was something Light valued deeply but his values didn't seem to matter so much anymore and he didn't want the task force, especially L, to know about the darker nature of his thoughts when he couldn't even make sense of them. If anyone could understand, it would be L, but there never seemed to be a way to open up and he wasn't sure what the detective would make of an attempt to. Light didn't think he could have handled being treated like a suspect after confiding in him, pouring out everything he'd been keeping bottled up, and he couldn't bet on being treated like a friend. He understood the need for the distinction between the two, he understood, but that didn't make it any less hurtful; that didn't make him feel less alone.
It was worst at night. Light had been having trouble sleeping since moving into headquarters, laying awake listening to the tapping of L's laptop or his restless shifting around in the bed next to him. Light was a creature of habit and he had always had his own room, his own bed. To have L watching as he slept felt almost familiar in a way he had no explanation for, but the physical presence of him so close did not. He expected to grow accustomed to it and then be able to sleep more easily but the words and thoughts occupying his mind were given free reign in the still of the late hours and allowed him no rest. It was at that time that he felt most vulnerable, and L's presence as well as the quiet made it nearly unbearably tempting to break it.
He stared into the darkness and thought about the case and L and Kira and the creeping emptiness, and the words inside broke through without his consent, "Do you think the world can really change?" The silence rushed in again to cover the gap and stretched on long enough that, to his relief and sinking disappointment, he started to wonder if L was already asleep or hadn't heard him, or if maybe he hadn't even said it out loud, but then,
“I do think so.”