User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Episode 265: Tartaros arc: That Is the Power of Life, Review/@comment-7418318-20151226095353/@comment-4829046-20151226172309

It's funny how I made this remark about Natsu a short while ago :D

I know what you are going for Sane, but...

"One of the reasons why I have found post-Tartaros Lucy quite unappealing, but that's off-topic..."

Yeah..... that's what actually happened whether you(Or I) like it or not. It is as simple fact that Natsu just didn't want to deal with the goodbyes so he took the typical action series protagonist route of leaving a letter and walking towards the sunset(Gildarts to a tee) Natsu took Igneel's death as a reason to get stronger. What would have REALLY got to him was if he was there when the guild was disbanded. Mashima made sure that he wouldn't know about the disbandment. That way, he would meet Lucy and in his usual gungho fashion, drag her around to reform the guild. On a writing perspective it makes sense, but that doesn't change the fact that Lucy was LEFT ALONE(physically at least). That's the important thing. Every other member that joined after Lucy had a companion, but she lost her FT family(and right after losing her oldest CS family member) and was really down because of it. She may have had Loke, but that's different.