Pitt

The only glimpses of Pitt come from childhood images set in Resembool, where he is drawn as a freckle-faced boy with curly brown hair and rust-tinged green eyes, standing at roughly the same height as Edward. For much of the story he wears a pair of glasses, though he eventually confesses that the spectacles are pure theater, put on only to seem more grown-up. When Edward borrows them and asks how he looks, Pitt and Alphonse both laugh that the lenses do nothing to age him.

Older than Edward by a couple of months, Pitt shares so many traits with him that the two feel like reflections of one another. Both grew up with fathers absent for work and mothers who leaned on them, both were reckless enough to cause as much trouble as help, and both emerged as natural ringleaders among the village children. That similarity fuels a relentless rivalry, a compulsion to prove himself taller, tougher, and more capable than Ed at every opportunity. Beneath the bravado sits real insecurity. Pitt aches over Winry, who only ever seems to think of the Elrics, and he quietly resents the recognition Edward commands as a State Alchemist while his own neighbors have lost faith in him.

After the Elric brothers set out to recover their bodies, Pitt left Resembool as well, traveling to a distant town to study herbal remedies and follow his father into medicine. The friends reunite by chance when a punishing fever forces Edward to rest in that same town, and the two fall back into old memories, recalling childish schemes and the pillbug prank Winry famously turned back on them. Their reunion is bittersweet. Pitt is stung by a blunder he made early in his training that cost him the trust of one local family, and by the sense that Winry cares only for Ed. In classic form, the visit ends with the pair still arguing over who is taller, Pitt hurling paint remover to erase the measurements Alphonse had taken and crowing that he beat Edward by half an inch.