Disclaimer: One Piece not mine.
Summary: For five years, he lived a lie. In moments of weakness, Kaku had allowed himself to be dazzled. Enies Lobby arc spoilers.
Sunlit Waters
For five years, he'd lived a lie. It had tasted so real, so sweet. Looking back, those five years had not passed in a continuous stream, but rather in flashes, each one as brilliant and mercurial as the sunlit waters of that distant town. In moments of weakness, Kaku had allowed himself to be dazzled. He had lived in those moments, breathed in whole imaginary lifetimes of sweeping skies and bracing wind and unguarded smiles. Then Kaku would open his eyes – to his choices, his mission, the real lifetime ahead, stark and impatient – and gather himself up with all the briskness and professionalism for which he is known to his fellow CP9 members.
Kaku is not Lucci. He does not kill for killing's sake and unnecessary bloodshed has always been distasteful, along with all unnecessary things. But he does not correct the other man when he speaks for all of CP9 in naming the thirst for battle as their motivation. In some ways, Kaku supposes he is right.
There is a weakness in him, which some may have call strength, that prevented Kaku from relenting to Water 7, for all the temptations it offered. It is not loyalty to the ruthless and broken individuals he is forced to call nakama. It is certainly not fear of the government body he is forced to call master. It is something in Kaku that runs cold and deep, deeper than loyalty, or fear, or even the stirrings of shame that Paulie's plaintive cry had evoked (his eyes had been wet-rimmed, bloodshot, torn open).
It is this part of him that dubs Water 7 a hollow sham, infested with weaklings to be used and discarded. It never lets Kaku forget that their supposed kindness was only for his persona and what right did these civilian scum have to adore him, when adoring meant that they were somehow equal? This little corner of him calculates and weighs the value of both sides, and tells Kaku that CP9 is where he belongs.
It tells him that he is not meant to live in moments or believe in pretty lies. He is not foolish enough, blind enough (strong enough).
When he is lying flat on his back, well and truly beaten to the ground by Roronoa Zoro, Kaku faces the sky and remembers the sensation of flying (a breath, a leap). Perhaps he could have been happy, but most likely not. All paths would still have led down to this, to now (the city sprawled out before him in all its glittering channels and winding intricacies and he'd arced overhead, airborne one moment, then falling, falling).