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"N-no, not AWFUL awful," Oliver stammered, waving his hands, he didn't mean to imply anything, well, awful about Finn. But the laugh he received from the normally stoic and expressionless man set his mind more at ease. Oliver even managed to smile a little bit.

"Um, just... you know, a little- P-pardon?" It was at that point he realized what it was Ripley expected of him. His immediate reaction was to balk. "Ah, I-I d-don't think... um..." A timid pause. "A-are you sure it helps? W-with getting over fears?"

He regarded the harness with no small amount of doubt, but after a second of thought he did as he was bid and stepped into it.

Oliver watched with trepidation as Ripley secured the harness around him. "Finn is nice at times though... really deep down... He brought me cookies once." And then hit him in the side of the head with one, and dumped him roughly into a shower stall, but the point was he had brought cookies.

The kid's mutterings and internal musings were mostly self-distractions. Truth be told, he would have preferred the harness to be too tight than a little loose. Even the relative discomfort of wearing such a harness for the first time was nothing compared to his fear of it not holding up. "Uh... I-I think it's fine... Are you sure it's, um... secure enough?"

It was hard to argue, even if Ripley made it seem like the cookies had come from a dead man buried in the Yukon. Finn was a very... unusual person, especially when it came to topics like friendship and kindness. But he had always been honest, so Oliver was able to let his guard down around the other man regardless of how dangerous everyone else thought he could be.

For a minute the harness felt secure, and Oliver was relieved. And then he was pushed towards the wall, and all those good, safe feelings disappeared when he remembered he was all set up to climb it. His eyes were drawn upwards to where the top seemed an impossibly long way up.

"Um... H-how do I... uh..." When he looked back down to the wall in front of him, he noticed some irregularities, and some horizontal cracks, but it didn't seem like enough to hold onto. He had never climbed a rock wall like this before.

The more Oliver looked, the easier it became to spot potential places to grasp and support his weight. Looking down, he put one foot on a small outcrop. Looking up, there was a crack he could reach. Repeating the process had him successfully stuck to the wall, and even if it were only a foot off the ground, it was a step Oliver never would have been able to take on his own.

It was scary, yes, but the fear was less present in his mind than the challenge of finding the next place to put his foot and pull himself up with his arms. He never would have thought balance would be so tricky, he couldn't lean out like climbing a ladder with what little cracks he could cling to. The center of gravity had to be as close to the wall as possible to avoid falling.

"I-it's really hard," Oliver said, perhaps stating the obvious, or perhaps looking for the reassurance that Ripley was still there if he slipped.

Oliver put his toe into a crevice, but it slipped as he began to test his weight. He froze in place.

"H-how do I find a step when I-I c-can't look down?"

"O-oh..."

The boy remained frozen where he was for a long minute, and then slowly looked down at the wall. His second attempt to move on was more successful, and Oliver was slowly able to move up another couple feet.

Until his foot slipped once again, and he was not so quick on the recovery. It was too sudden, and instead of getting a moment to find his footing his entire weight dropped and his fingers slipped. The Life trainee let out a loud yelp as he began to fall.

Oliver wasn't prepared for the rope to catch him, instead of taking that opportunity to regain his wall foothold he curled up in preparation for a hard landing... Which, at the rate Ripley let him down, merely resulted in a bonked head as he swung back towards the wall.

The uncurling happened when he realized there was no immediate danger thanks to the harness. It was only the poor boy's bad luck that this occurred the moment the rope snapped and he found himself falling right onto Ripley. It appeared neither of them had luck that would hold up. (No pun intended.)

Although safely on the ground, Oliver's panicky response to the situation didn't end until he had scrambled off Ripley, and sat in a shaky ball with his back to the wall. "A-are y-you okay?" He replied, ignoring the initial question since he had no good way to answer.