User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Episode 265: Tartaros arc: That Is the Power of Life, Review/@comment-7418318-20151226095353/@comment-7418318-20151226123110

How it is running away? By being it, that's how.

How is it anything other than running away?

Sometimes the difference between a legitimate reason and an excuse is just the point of view and I guess between us it's just that. Different points of view.

For me avoiding direct conversation is a cowards act (not just here, but in real life too). Talking it out might seem a bother beforehand, but in my experience it is always the better option... at least as long as you deal with people who aren't completely unreasonable or egoistical, something that neither Lucy nor Natsu are. I am absolutely convinced that talking face-to-face would have been better for both Natsu and Lucy. Sicne we'll later see that Natsu didn't suffer emotionally, it doesn't matter for him, but Lucy would have been off a whole lot better if she could have talked to Natsu and thus get much better closure to the events of the Tartaros arc.

Like this it pretty much remained an open wound left to fester and only beginning to close up once Natsu comes back.

Despite how this reads I'm not trying to say that your view on it is wrong. This is a talk about feelings and there's no right or wrong in feelings. It's just individual perspective. For me it just felt different between the manga and anime, and I liked the seriousness of how I perceived the manga more than the bit of light-heartedness that the anime added, since it also fits in better with the rest of the arc and what is to come.

But there is one thing that scene does very well. Even from "just" knowing that Natsu and Happy will be gone, she already thinks that she'll be lonely... and then THAT happens. So at least in this sense the scene gives us an inkling of how she must have felt when Makarov made his announcement and what followed.