Hi @pyr, I've just reached the development team about it.
So for them, this is not a bug since FieldList store only baseLink.
In Python, we don't have BaseLink, but if you are not aware of what it is, please read BaseLink Manual.
But since there is no BaseLink in Python, if a link points to a destructed object (like in your case, Python simply returns None)
So I guess your workaround is ok.
Cheers,
Maxime