...oh no.

To his shame, his first thought was that he did not have the energy to deal with a crying kid. But that first thought didn't last very long. Kids were kids. Annoying and loud and chaotic and quite often both smelly and sticky. But they were kids. They couldn't exactly help it, and they couldn't take care of themselves. So now, when faced with a frightened kid in the middle of an overly full mall, not even Ford was heartless enough to turn away.

He rose on his toes. Being as tall as he was he had no problem peering over the crowd, trying to see if he was any form of the commotion a parent looking for their child were bound to cause. Nothing. And the kid was still curled up and not responding to Darcy's soft voice.

He knelt down as well, in front of the boy. "Hey, kid." His tone wasn't as soft as Darcy's, nowhere near. But not as gruff as it could be either. "You lost?" Screw asking how he was. He was terrified, so obviously he wasn't. So, Ford thought, let's get straight to the matter of things and solve this.