I've been watching the Subbed!YGO DM series. Holy crap, comparing it with the 4Kids Dub is like comparing frogs and cows. It essentially renewed my already burning love for Puzzle Shipping and Puppy Shipping. So far, I'm on the first episode of the Possessed!Jounouchi v Yuugi Episodes in Season 2 (I've already watched all of Season 0). I haven't watched farther than the second duels on the blimp in the Eng Dub.

This is essentially a one-shot collection in Yami's POV inspired by the episodes and a few chapters of the Season 0 manga. Sometimes, I might switch to Yuugi's, but it depends on the situation/episode. I also might backtrack if something strikes my fancy or I get the inspiration so this might not be in complete chronological order (I'll tell when each one takes place). They can be short and to the point or they can explore a certain thing that happened in an episode/chapter.

To prevent this story from appearing too close to the original work, some headcanons have been added in and it is definitely non-canon compliant considering Yami has awareness before Yuugi solves the puzzle.

| Time (Before Season 0)

For the longest time, his only memories were of darkness and confusion.

Days, months, and years would pass by but his only companion was the darkness that encompassed inside what he had come to call his home. He would wander countless hallways and travel through many doors, but his mind would remain blank in the face of the item his soul was housed in – the Millennium Puzzle. It was a familiar routine if not lonely and a bit desolate.

At times, he wondered what exactly he was supposed to do. It had to be something or else he wold not be in the puzzle in the first place.

However, at one point, not that he could really pinpoint it himself, something changed. Time had no power over him, not in the same way as the shadows did. Whereas the shadows have all but stripped the barest pieces of his personality away, time has done nothing but been a constant in the outside world. Nevertheless, the time of change was also a time where he was filled with an uncontrollable rage.

Someone had dared to defile his home! The experience of his tomb being opened whammed his senses. A sense of awareness was gained from the event – the ability to gauge the energies, and through them the memories, of those of the outside world. The energies he felt from the defilers made him shudder in revulsion. Greedy hearts that had no respect for the ancients. The wrathful and weeping souls of many rulers clung to their spirits, seeking a futile revenge for their eternal sleep being disturbed. He simply couldn't bear such disrespectful and hurtful behavior continue.

For their crimes, all those who had witnessed the defiling had died.

It was too late. He knew that the Millennium Puzzle had been taken from its original place in a tomb far underneath the ground. He knew that it was moved from place to place throughout spaces of time; sometimes over land and sometimes over sea.

As the Millennium Puzzle was passed between different sorts of characters with their own history and personalities, he had found that sometimes he would feel nothing but complete apathy to them or he would feel disgust at even being within sighted by some. All of those feelings were based on the energies the people radiated. It was due this that he began to realize that perhaps the defiling had some merit for he had realized that perhaps he was waiting for the right person to solve the puzzle. The idea made sense and he had accepted that one day someone would be fated to solve the puzzle. He eagerly waited for that day.

Still, somethings ceased to change– his rage fueled the puzzle and the shadows against all those who were absolutely not worthy of his being.

Some were killed, some bedridden by illness or injury, others simply could not solve the puzzle and either gave up or spent the rest of their lives trying to solve it (sometimes even driving away those who loved them the most). At the time, it mattered not to him. What mattered the most to him was finding the person he was waiting for.