The early bird catches the worm. Granted, Fitz wasn't in a race against his co-workers, but he had a lot to do, and sleep was always secondary to scientific research. Besides, no one had been sleeping very soundly these days outside of patients in Medical.
Fitz had been intrigued by the mystery of the amber pods ever since his arrival a year ago. He'd devoted a large portion of time to studying Caitlin's work alongside both her and Jemma. Daisy's vanishing and return had made the subject more pressing, but the late attacks had only refocused his interest. The point of all this was the retrieval apparatus, of course. They could not afford anyone else waking up in the hands of BNU, certainly not a board member with access to all SadTech's secrets. As long as they achieved that much, the project would be a success, but there were still more possibilities. Fitz had never been one to shy away from an ambitious pursuit.
He hadn't known Mordecai as long as Caitlin had nor had he worked with the board member as closely as she and Jemma, but that didn't make the death less of a blow against his people. Daisy had come back. Even Bellamy had come back. There was a precedent to study if they could just replicate the circumstances. Besides, if they could retrieve the magician somehow, then who else might they summon?
Fitz hadn't delved too far into questions of what his team members had experienced back home. He had a certain theory of what might have or could have happened when he and May set off to find Mack and Polly (that building had been dangerously unstable). Their timeline had required drastic changes to avert a set future, and unlike some of the others, Fitz hadn't held out much hope that such changes could be made.
But if this project proved successful, Mack, Polly, even Coulson and Enoch might join them in the relative safety of this dimension.
The remnants of broken pods were a helpful study in this case. They couldn't do anything to save those already lost at this time (and records suggested that this world was better off without those individuals who had been identified) but it provided pieces of the substance for testing. Radioactivity, harmonics, crystallization, melting points, any imperfections in the grain… He looked for differences between pods that drew from different sources. It was unfortunate that Mordecai had been the only arrival from his dimension, but Bellamy's world had plenty of representation. He wasn't even the only person to have come and gone. It was a goldmine of data.
Perhaps looking over the pods from home was less wise on a psychological level than a scientific level, but Daisy and Captain Rogers were similar repeats. A successful result required complete data, not to mention that Fitz had a vested interest in preserving his team and family. Still, he might not have been fully prepared to find himself looking down at the face of Grant Ward.
It was not the first time he'd dealt with versions of his former teammate, alive or dead. Coulson may have gone too far when he killed Grant, but Fitz couldn't claim that he had never been motivated by revenge and anger - or even that he hadn't taken some satisfaction in Ward's death. Seeing that satisfaction mirrored in the man he most admired had bothered Fitz as much as anything else. In the Framework, he'd had little connection to Agent Ward, but the similarities and differences between them had sickened him. Given the right circumstances and influences, there wasn't much to choose from between them.
That said seeing the man who had both jumped from one plane to save Jemma's life and ejected them both from another, who had killed Eric and Agent Hand, murdered Coulson's girlfriend, and ordered Jemma tortured to force Fitz's cooperation - would never inspire indifference. Fitz set his jaw. Those emotions weren't helpful. They wouldn't stop him from doing the job that needed to be done, of course. Nothing would prevent that, not even alienating a friend who might as well be a sister to him (Fitz tried not to question how Daisy had forgiven him. He was too grateful that she had.), who deserved far better from him than Grant Ward ever had. That was a distraction. He needed to focus on collecting samples for the mass spectrometer. If they could control who they awoke, perhaps they could ensure others never did.
Shaving a millimetres thin slice from the amber pod for study took dexterity and concentration. If his bad hand shook slightly, it wasn't due to weakness. It had been a little bit off for years now, ever since… Fitz took his hands off the controls for the laser scalpel and ran them through his hair. This was stupid. He could do this.
If not, he would do this. That wasn't a solution; that was a nuclear option. Fitz took three deep, slow breaths, steadied his hands and returned to work.