Jan profile stuff

"Where there is light, there must be shadow..."
-Haruki Murakami

They had sent her off.
As the rain fell in its many torrents and cascades, Jan stared out at her surroundings through the window of the car, watching the raindrops pitter and patter against the glass with all the tranquil fury they could muster. The driver, a man who had identified himself as Talbot, continued to say nothing to her as he drove, and for that she was thoroughly thankful. The absence of any hamhanded attempts at conversation gave her the privilege of thought, which was something she felt she well and truly deserved right about now.
She made yet another attempt to reflect on the happenings of the last few months. Where had things gone sour?
It crossed her mind that her current situation may have been her own fault. As much as she disliked thinking about it, she knew somewhere in her heart that she had made no small amount of wrong decisions out of her own impulse these last few months. It had been years since her life's events had felt so fully beyond her control. The feeling was thoroughly irksome to her, and as she felt the reigns slipping from her grasp, she found herself making such careless mistakes. Retrospectively, she allowed herself to acknowledge that much.
But this wasn't all her fault. No, she couldn't-- wouldn't-- blame herself for everything that had led to her predicament, not when there were so many other factors playing into the grander scheme. Lilly, her dear sister who for all of her intelligence and cognition hadn't had the sense to keep herself out of the limelight, and Laura, their dear mother who in spite of her claims of "love" for them was as likely to put them in the hospital as she was to embrace them. The relationship between the three of them, confusing, dysfunctional and ultimately volatile...
Part of her wanted things back to the way they were, when she and Lilly were the only ones in the equation, .
A different, far beyond morbid part of her wished to stay in the three-way that had developed between the lot of them, as much for the pleasure of Lilly's company as for the twisted form of entertainment she derived from the few times she had managed to rouse anger out of her mother.
And now, neither of the two desires were to be met.
A shift in position forced her out of her daydreaming as the car finally turned off the freeway, heading down an exit. The further their vehicle went, the more Jan felt it dawn on her that she had come a long way from home. Nothing looked familiar. Not the cars. Not the streets. Not the buildings. Even the rain itself seemed like an entity foreign to the girl. How this was possible was beyond her, but she felt it still. She felt it in her bones.
Her resolve hardened. Knowing Laura, this "boarding school" to which she had been sent could have been anything, but she hardly found a reason to care. Whatever she ran into would soon scatter before her like leaves, as everything outside of her own household had always done. If her own mother couldn't stir her from the path of her own personality, then no one could.
She'd play along, all right. And when it came time for her to return, she would do so just as willingly, smiling and stepping on everyone's toes along the way.

Background

Beginnings
She was born with the blackest of hair and the darkest of eyes. She liked to think that when her twin had begun to eschew the natural "blonde hair, blue eyes" look of her mother in favor of black dye and black contacts, she had done so as a means of emulating that which she herself had been born with. Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery after all, and when it came to flattering each other, the twins had always carried such an abundance.
Like her sister, when it came to academics, she found herself able to accomplish what she needed with relative ease. Indeed, the two of them had times when they would compete to see which one of them could outdo the other in which field. Where Lilly often took the prizes for mathematics and history, Jan seemed to best her when it came to her artistic and literary abilities. And in this, she took much pride.
But like any dagger worth its steel, Jan's mind was oftentimes as dangerous as it was sharp. Very early on, she began to grasp a modicum of subtlety that her vaguely older twin seemed shockingly incapable of. Cunning and persuasion came to her as easily as any of her artistic talents, and it wasn't long before she developed an unnatural gift for manipulating people into getting what she wanted. Ah yes, she loved getting what she wanted, and the more consistently she managed to do so, the more her need for such a thing rose. She enjoyed having control over the lives of others almost as much as she enjoyed the rewards she was able to reap from playing everyone into her hands. Sex, a lovely and fun little tool that Lilly had shown her when she was only eight, played a very healthy role in this part of her life, and while she always reserved her best efforts for her twin, having so many people to "practice" on as a result of her exploits was hardly something she could complain about.
To the superstitious, Jan being born the only dark-haired, dark-eyed member in the family might have been an omen. Ask a few select people, and they might even consider that possibility themselves.

Changes
When the people began taking an interest in Lilly over Jan, it wasn't nearly enough time before the latter began taking advantage of the situation. Between her physical developments, excellence in school and general lust for attention, Lilly proved to be the perfect distraction, allowing Jan the chance to truly spread her wings behind the scenes. She built around herself an environment where she could taste her own pleasures as she wished, for in her numerous escapades over the years, she had developed many, many, many appetites. She surrounded herself with a small circle of like-minded friends and other acquaintances, and together they indulged themselves near-endlessly.
But things were much different in the twins' household.
As the two of them had grown, their mother had begun to take quite the interest in her developing daughters. Their days at home grew rife with sex and abuse, their mother visiting upon the two them her own special form of "familial bonding". Lilly, it seemed, was content with taking everything lying down, or at the very least doing her own personal equivalent of such. Jan, who had done as much of her own "lying down" for Lilly as vice-versa, knew full well when the latter was being submissive.
Jan herself, however, was having none of it. In fact, when it came time for her "turns" with Laura (which admittedly weren't quite as frequent as Lilly's), she made a game of seeing just how well she could resist her mother at every turn. There was a certain sick satisfaction she gained from seeing her mother's reaction to her less-than-compliant approach to their get-togethers, even as her impertinence continued to earn her a far more vicious treatment than what her sister received. As much as it bothered her to admit it, she saw a strange amount of herself in Laura whenever they were together, an insight which aided her in finding what got under her mother's skin. But below the surface, lurking in depths that Jan herself would not reveal to with anyone, the challenge that came with opposing someone vaguely akin to herself was exhilarating. Horribly, gruesomely exhilarating.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the fun wasn't entirely mutual. As Lilly grew more obsequious and Jan became more brazen, Laura made a decision which the twins completely failed to see coming. Jan's defiant behavior earned her a trip abroad, to a boarding school run by people who Laura was quite connected with, while Lilly was to remain by her mother's side. In just one move, the twins were separated, the network borne of Jan's machinations fragmented, and a growing nuisance was off to live somewhere else for the time being.
The girl was out and gone for two years. Nobody really knows what took place in her life once she arrived at the school, nor does anyone familiar with Laura or the rest of the DiMore household wish to ask. When Jan finally did return home, things seemed relatively back to normal-- as normal as such an anomalous and distressing family can make them-- and life seemed to move on.
In fact, to some who have seen her since her arrival (it wasn't too long ago, you know...), Jan seems just the same as she always did. Which only serves to beg an important question.
Did anything change?

Relationships
Laura: "Oh, mother. How am I supposed to feel about a person who can beat the living shit out of me without a speck of remorse, yet illicit so many strange and wonderfu- Err...hrm. Well, I do love her. In-between the times we're at our wits' end with each other, we get along well enough that I could call her a friend. Why on Earth she sent me abroad for two years, I may never know...

Lilly: "My dear, dear sister who I would trade for nothing. 'If you're going to do someone, do them well.', I say, and she understands that principle as well as she understands me. Her imprudence is downright hilarious sometimes, as are her reactions when I do the things that bother her most (I know them all, you see~), but I may never find another person with so much in common with myself [b]and[/b] such a deep and intimate knowledge of what gets me off.

Quirks

-Julliard guitarist.
-Avid artist, reader and writer.
-Constant schemer and manipulator, though her foresight for avoiding long-term consequences for her actions has only recently begun to develop.
-Practically runs on malice, spite and greed.
-Plainly believes that she's a more creative composer than her sister, though she acknowledges the latter's superior raw playing ability.
-Spends nearly every waking moment of her life smoking.
-Would be perfectly happy to live in a world where there was nobody else like her, though she still enjoys the company of those who are.
-Sometimes dreams of being the last person alive at the end of the world.
-Lost her virginity to her sister at the age of eight.
-Occasionally draws her own pornography, a hobby which once got her in trouble during middle school when she attempted to sell some of her pages to her friends.
-Knows how to properly wield a butterfly knife, and refuses to tell anyone when and where she learned how.
-Loves reading, and is especially fond of comic books.